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ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS; 



EXTRACTS 

FROM 

VAKIOUS BOOKS EXPLANATORY OF THE DERIVATION 
OR MEANING OF DIVERS WORDS. 



BY ARTHUR JOHN KNAPP. 



Verba sunt rerum note." — Cic. Top. 8. 



LONDON: 

PRIVATELY PRINTED. 

1856. 



205449 
J 13 






LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMiORD STREET, 
AND OH A RING CROSS. 



PREFACE, 



The author of the following pages, who has for 
many years taken an interest in antiquarian, his- 
torical, and genealogical research, acknowledges the 
gratification afforded him by the perusal of Mr. 
Trench's book ' On the Study of Words/ which first 
invited him to explore this new and interesting field, 
at such occasional and limited intervals as his pro- 
fessional duties admitted of his devoting to the 
purpose. He cannot, however, express the same 
gratification from the perusal of Mr. Trench's later 
work, ' English Past and Present,' since he there 
found many words derived or explained which were 
previously destined to appear in this little volume, 
and which, in consequence, he has been obliged to 
reduce, not without regret, since the special object 
of this publication is to form from the proceeds of its 
sale the nucleus of a fund for providing church and 
school accommodation in a rural parish, where, with 
a population of several thousands, the church will 

b 2 



IV PREFACE. 

accommodate only a few hundreds, and where there 
is no provision for schools. With such facts as 
these to recommend his object, the author hesitates 
not to let the volume go forth in its present form, 
preferring this course to increasing its size by further 
delay, which might endanger a further entrenchment 
upon it. He has generally preserved references to 
the works from which he has made extracts, but he 
is conscious that in many instances this has been 
neglected, especially where he has borrowed from 
dictionaries or cyclopaedias ; he however acknow- 
ledges his obligation to every author from whose 
works he has made extracts without giving the 
reference. Should any who may peruse this Pre- 
face feel disposed to contribute to the sum sought to 
be raised, the author will thankfully receive such 
contributions. 



10, Paragon, Clifton, 
Oct. 1855. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Of the Saxon Language in names and places in England 7 



CHAPTER II. 

Of words which we have acquired from the institutions 
or customs of the Romans 20 

CHAPTER III. 

Of words derived from the names of places or persons . . 40 

CHAPTER IV. 

Of words the etymology of which is obscured by reason 
of the original spelling ^having been corrupted .. .. 58 

CHAPTER V. 

Of the interchange of letters in languages 73 



*©~ — o- 



CHAPTER VI. 
The same subject continued 91 

CHAPTER VII. 
The consideration of words in daily use with us .. .. 112 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Of words derived from the Greek language 133 



ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS, 



CHAPTER I. 



Of the Saxon Language in Names and Places in 
England. 

The truth of the words of Cicero which I have 
selected as the motto for this little book, that " words 
are the record of things," becomes more and more 
apparent according to the degree of investigation 
which we bestow upon the origin and meaning of 
words. The names of our country, and the dis- 
tricts, towns, and places in it, will, when examined, 
bear out this assertion, and I propose in this chapter 
very briefly to investigate the early description of 
our country as given by our historians, and to test 
the fidelity of their narratives by an examination 
into the origin of the names given to many of the 
places in it. Mr. Hume, in his first chapter, says, 
" All ancient writers agree in representing the first 
inhabitants of Britain as a tribe of the Gauls or 
Celtae, who peopled that island from the neighbour- 
ing continent — their language was the same, their 
manners, their government, their superstitions;" 
and after describing the successive invasions by the 
Romans and the Saxons, he adds : " Thus was esta- 



8 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 

Wished, after a violent contest of near a hundred 
and fifty years, the Heptarchy or seven Saxon king- 
doms in Britain, and the whole southern part of the 
island, excepting Wales and Cornwall, had totally 
changed its inhabitants, language, customs, and 
political institutions." From this we see that Wales 
and Cornwall continued to be inhabited by the 
people styled Gauls or Celtse, who, from Caesar's 
Commentaries on the wars in Gaul, Book I. c. 1, 
appear to have been called in their own language 
Celtse, but in the Roman language Galli. 

The names of these provinces, Wales and Corn- 
wall, bear evidence of the fact that they were peopled 
by the persons called Galli, for the word Wallia 
(Wales) is but the Saxon corruption of Gallia, by 
the change of the letter Q- into W, in the same 
manner as the French word ^ardien becomes in our 
language warden, ^arderobe wardrobe, </arenne 
warren, guerre war, #uepe wasp. In the statute of 
2 Richard, c. 6 (1378), " against Welshmen taking 
away women from England, and other abuses," the 
Welshmen are called " gentz de Gales," and in the 
statute 2 Hen. IV. c. 12 (1400), " enacting that no 
Welshman wholly born in Wales shall purchase 
lands or tenements in Chester," &c, the words are 
" null homme Galoys entier neez en Gales et aiaux 
pere et mere neez en Gales purchace terres ou tene- 
mentz deinx les villes de Cestre," &c. ; and to this 
day a Welshman is, in the French language, called 



Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. i) 

" Gallois," and the Prince of Wales " le Prince de 
Galles." 

So with respect to Cornwall, the Romans gave to 
this district the name of Cornubia (probably from 
cornu, a horn or promontory, descriptive of the 
numerous promontories on the coast), and the Saxons 
adopted the first syllable of this descriptive word, 
adding Gallia as descriptive of the people, but in 
like manner changing g into w, and thus forming 
the word Cornwall. 

Antiquarians have perplexed themselves in their 
endeavours to discover the etymology of the name 
of the town of Wallingford in Berkshire, but none 
of their conjectures appear to me satisfactory. I 
would suggest the possibility of the name being 
a corruption of Galliaford, and the record of some 
defeat of the Galli or Gauls at this place, the par- 
ticulars of which have not descended to us. Our 
historians, describing the establishment of the Hep- 
tarchy, say that the Saxon leader, Hengist, laid the 
foundation of the kingdom of Kent, comprehending 
Middlesex, Essex, part of Surrey, and Kent. Mid- 
dlesex, it is evident, was the county of the middle 
Saxons, Essex that of the East Saxons, Surrey the 
land south of the river Thames (as St. Mary Overy 
is St. Mary's over the river), and Kent (written in 
Domesday Chent) is the corruption of Canticum, 
the Roman name of that province, still preserved in 
our days in the name of the city of Canterbury. 

b 3 



10 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 

Mr. Hume says, " The next Saxon kingdom esta- 
blished in Britain was that of South Saxony by 
Ella, who brought over an army from Germany in 
the year 477." We find that Ella died in 504, and 
was succeeded in the kingdom by his son Cissa. 
This kingdom of South Saxony we have corrupted 
into Sussex, and its chief town, founded by Cissa, 
Cissaciaster, into Chichester. The kingdom of West 
Saxony was the third which was founded by the 
Saxons, and adjoined the South Saxons on the west, 
and was therefore called Wessex, or the country of 
the West Saxons, and seems originally to have con- 
sisted of the counties of Hants, Dorset, Wilts, and 
Berks. The founders of this kingdom attempted to 
extend their conquests, and laid siege to Mount 
Badon, or Banes downe, near Bath (where the Bri- 
tons had retired), so named from the hot springs in 
the neighbourhood, which have rendered the city so 
celebrated throughout the world, but which name 
we have most unreasonably corrupted into Lans- 
downe. 

The kingdom of the East Saxons was the fourth 
in order of the Heptarchy, and seems to have been 
formed principally out of the kingdom of Kent, and 
to have comprised Essex, Middlesex, and part of 
Hertfordshire. The name of Seward, one of the 
early kings of the East Saxons, is preserved to us 
in the name of the hamlet of Sewardstone in the 
parish of Waltham Abbey, as is the name of Offa, 



Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 1 1 

one of its later kings, in the name of Offley, near 
Hitchin, where he had a palace. 

Next to the kingdom of the East Saxons was the 
kingdom of the East Angles, containing the coun- 
ties of Cambridge, Norfolk, and Suffolk, and founded 
by Uffa, whose name is still perpetuated in that of 
the village of Ufford (Uffa's ford) in Suffolk, on the 
river Deben. The two latter counties still preserve, 
with a trifling alteration in orthography and pro- 
nunciation, their original Saxon names of the North- 
folk and the Southfolk. In Norfolk also the name 
of the chief Saxon town, Northwic, is continued in 
the name of Norwich, and in Suffolk the Saxon 
town of Southberi is preserved in the modern name 
of Sudbury. 

The sixth kingdom of the Heptarchy was the 
kingdom of the North Humber, and comprised the 
whole of the district lying north of the river Hum- 
ber, known to us as Northumberland, Cumberland, 
Westmoreland, Durham, Lancashire, and Yorkshire. 
This kingdom was originally two, one founded by 
Ida, comprising the four former counties, and called 
Bernicia, and the other by Ella, comprising Lanca- 
shire and Yorkshire, and called Deira. The grand- 
son of Ida married the daughter of Ella, and the 
two kingdoms became united. Traces of Ella's 
name still continue in Yorkshire in the name of 
the parish of Ella Kirk, and the township of Ella 
West, Ella East, and Ellerby in the East Riding ; 



12 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 

also in the West Riding in the Chapelry of Ellard, 
and in the township of Ellerbeck and the parish of 
Ellerburn in the North Riding. 

Cumberland derived its name from tribes of Celtic 
origin known by the name of Cymri or Kymri, who 
were its inhabitants at the time of the Saxon inva- 
sion : by this same name are the Welsh still known 
in the Principality, and from them it received, by 
the Romans, the appellation of Cambria, by which 
it is still known to us. 

The last and greatest of the seven kingdoms of 
the Heptarchy was that of Mercia, so called since, 
being situated in the middle of the whole country, 
it formed a March or border upon all the rest which 
abutted on it. It was situated southward of the 
kingdom of North Humber, and was bounded on 
the east by the kingdom of East Anglia and East 
Saxony, west by Wales, and south by the kingdoms 
of Wessex and South Saxony. In the name of the 
town of Oswestry in this kingdom we have a record 
of the battle fought there in 642 between Oswald, 
king of the North Humbers, and Penda, king of 
the Mercians, in which the former was defeated and 
slain ; and in the parish of Offenham in Worcester- 
shire we have a record of a subsequent king of 
Mercia, Offa, who resided there. In the Chapelry 
of St. Kenelm's, in the parish of Hales Owen, Shrop- 
shire, we have a memento of a later king of Mercia, 
St. Kenelm, who is reported to have been murdered 



Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 13 

in 819 at this place by his sister, and to which 
Shenstone alludes in his 23rd elegy : — 

" Born near the scene for Kenelm's fate renowned 
I take rny plaintive reed, and range the grove 
And raise the lay, and bid the rocks resound 
The savage force of empire and of love." 

Kennett, in his * Parochial Antiquities,' p. 31, says, 
that though these usurpers of the country were 
swallowed up in the same common name of Saxons, 
yet they were three different sorts of people, Saxons, 
Jutes, and Angles, of which the latter took posses- 
sion of the midland country, and were the most 
noble of all the intruding party. The Venerable 
Bede also calls the invaders Jutes, Saxons, and 
Angles. 

These Angles seem to have come from a small 
province in the kingdom of Denmark and duchy 
of Sleswick, north of the Elbe, which to this day 
is called Angeln. They are mentioned by Tacitus 
in his book on the c Manners of the Germans,' ch. 
40. We know that the kingdom of Wessex by 
degrees subdued the other six kingdoms of the Hep- 
tarchy, until, in the year 827, the whole country 
formed one kingdom under Egbert, shortly prior to 
which date Mr. Trench is of opinion that its 
earlier name of Britain was changed into that of 
Anglia. But I apprehend that the country must 
have been known by the name of Anglia at an 
earlier date ; for the Venerable Bede published 



14 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 

about 734 his work, entitled ' Historia Ecclesiastica 
Gentis Anglorum,' a title which he would hardly 
have adopted unless the nation had at that time 
been commonly called Angles. In Lewis's * Topo- 
graphical Dictionary of Wales,' Egbert is also 
said to have taken possession of the island for- 
merly called Mona, and to have changed its name 
into Anglesea, or the Isle of Angles, Ey being the 
Saxon word denoting an island. 

It is somewhat singular that we should have 
preserved the original spelling and pronunciation of 
the name of Anglesea, when we have corrupted the 
spelling of Anglia into England, and its pronuncia- 
tion into ihgland. 

As Anglesea signified the Isle of Angles, so 
Athelney, in Somersetshire, signified the Isle of 
Athels, or nobles, the name having been given by 
Alfred to that small isolated spot in the moors, 
which he fortified. So Sheppy signifies the Isle of 
Sheep, Ely the Isle of Eels, Hertsey the Isle of 
Herts, Bermondsey the Isle of St. Bermond, Bard- 
sey the Isle of Bards, formerly called the Isle of 
Saints, who in the monkish legends were stated to 
have enjoyed, whilst they continued virtuous, the 
privilege of dying in regular succession, the oldest 
going first, a privilege which was withdrawn when 
they became corrupt ; which legend I imagine the 
monks framed from Gen. ii. 28, where Abram's 
brother Haran is recorded as the first man who died 



Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 15 

before his father. The meadow at Chester, also, 
between the walls of the city on the west side, and 
the river Dee, now used as a race-course, is called 
Roodey, or the Island of the Rood or Cross. 

The monuments of our Saxon ancestors are 
thickly studded through our land in the names of 
our villages and towns. Thus, the Saxon word 
wold or weald, a forest, is preserved to us in the 
names of Waltham, in Essex, in the Cotswold Hills, 
in Gloucestershire, the Weald of Kent, and Stow-in- 
the-Wold in Gloucestershire, which were no doubt 
formerly extensive forests. Stow was the Saxon 
word for a place, and we still use it in our word 
" stowing away;" and the word is largely intro- 
duced into the names of our towns, of which Bristol, 
formerly Brightstowe, and Chepstow are instances. 
The prefix Chep to the latter name, denoted that 
the place was a market-town, from the Saxon word 
cyppan, to buy and sell, a word which we preserve 
in our word cheap, and when we talk of " chopping 
and changing ;" also, in our word "chapman," one 
who buys and sells. A market, or place where goods 
were bought and sold, was called a "chipping." 
In Wiclif's translation of the Bible in 1380, the 
passage at the 7th chap, of St. Luke, v. 32, is thus 
rendered : " Thei ben like to children sitting in 
chepinge and spekinge togidre," &c. ; and again, 
at 20th chap, of St. Matthew, v. 3 : " And he zede 
out about the thridde oure, and size othere stand- 



16 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 

ynge idil in the cheping ; " so again at the 7th 
chap, of St. Mark, v. 4 : " And whanne thei turnen 
again fro chepinge," &c. It would be tedious to 
give a list of the places in which this word is incor- 
porated, and I will only mention a few, such as 
Chipping Ongar, Cheapside, Chapmanslade, Chip- 
penham. The termination of the latter place, ham 
(which word we still retain in our word hamlet, a 
little village), is of very general occurrence, and 
signified a habitation or village, as Keynsham, the 
village of St. Keyna ; Farnham, the village of 
Ferns ; Horsham, the village of Horsa, brother of 
Hengist ; Shoreham, the village near the shore ; 
Denham, the village in the dale — den being the 
Saxon word for a valley or dale — whence places 
situated in valleys frequently had this termination, 
such as Ambrosden, Hampden, Missenden. Names 
of places beginning with Der indicate that they 
were formerly the resort of wild beasts, from Deor, 
a wild beast, such as Derby, Derwent, Deerhurst — 
the termination of the latter word hurst, or hirst, is 
used in Domesday Book, to denote a little wood, 
and so we find the word joined to names of places 
where wood formerly abounded, as Hurst Mon- 
ceaux, Hurst Courtney, Hurst Pierpoint, denoting 
the woods of the families of Monceaux, Courtney, 
and Pierpoint, and Chiselhurst, the wood abounding 
with pebbles — Chesyl signifying gravel or pebbles. 
For the same reason this latter word is affixed to 



Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 17 

the name of the parish of Chiselhampton, in Oxford- 
shire ; and to the Chesyl bank near Weymouth, 
which is an immense bank of pebbles thrown up by 
the sea, nine miles in length. We meet with this 
word in the ' Country Mysteries :' — 

" As soncl in the Se doth ebbe and flowe 
Hath chesyls many innnnierablle, 
So shall thi sede thou mayst me trowe 
Encres and be evyr prophytabylle," — 

and it appears to me that we still preserve this an- 
cient name for pebbles in our word shingle, 

When names of places terminate in gate, it dis- 
closes to us that they were situated on a thorough- 
fare, "gate" being the Saxon word for a way or 
path ; thus, Sandgate is the sandy way ; Highgate, 
the high way ; Margate, the way to the sea. Hence, 
also, comes our word " gait," the manner of walk- 
ing, and, as I fancy, our word "gaiters," though 
Richardson says that the latter word is of no great 
antiquity in English. The names of places termi- 
nating in ford, evidently indicate their position on a 
river passable on foot, examples of which are Oxford, 
the ford of an ox (synonymous with the name 
Bosphorus), Knutsford, Canute's ford ; Bradford, 
the Broad ford ; and Hereford, the ford of an army, 
from the Saxon word her, an army, of which word 
we preserve a record in our word Herring, expressive 
of the number and order in which the shoals of 
these fishes arrive in our seas. Lord Coke says 



18 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. I. 

that "wic" signifies a place on the sea-shore, or on 
the banks of a river : hence we have Ipswich, 
Sandwich, Greenwich, Norwich, &c. In Cheshire 
the houses appropriated to the making of salt are 
called Wych-houses ; and the chief towns where the 
salt trade flourishes are called by the same name, 
as Nantwich, Middlewich, Northwich, Droitwich, 
Shirleywich, and Wicham ; and it would seem, 
therefore, that this word has some reference to 
salt. 

We need not, however, refer to counties and 
towns for evidence of Saxon remains, for every parish 
and farm furnishes such testimony. A very large 
portion of the fields of almost every farm bears the 
name of the Tyning, or the middle or upper Tyning, 
the word being derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb 
Tynan, to enclose, and thus the word signifies an 
enclosure, or close, as distinguished from the waste, 
or un-enclosed land. From the same origin, also, 
we get our word town, now signifying habitation, 
enclosed by walls, but which seems originally to 
have signified an enclosure of land, for where in 
our translation of the passage of St. Matthew, ch. 
22, v. 5 : " But they made light of it, and went their 
ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise " 
— in Wiclif's translation in 1380, the passage is : 
" But they dispiseden and wenten forth, oon to his 
town, another to his marchandise." And again in 
St. Luke, chap. 14, v. 18, the passage in our Bible : 



Chap. I. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 19 

" I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs 
go and see it," is in Wiclif s translation : " I have 
bougt a town, and I have nede to go out and se it." 
From the same source, also, we have the word 
Tunnel, signifying an enclosed or covered way. 

The word " holme " denotes a river island, or 
a place surrounded by rivers : thus we have the 
several holmes in Derwentwater, Windermere, and 
Ulswater; the "Flat Holmes" and the "Steep 
Holmes," in the Bristol Channel, and Axholme in 
Lincolnshire, a district of land bounded by the 
rivers Don, Trent, Tone, and Idle, the name being 
an abbreviation of Axelholme, from Axel, formerly 
the principal place in the district, but now a mere 
village called Haxey. The word lade signified 
flowing water, and was used by the Saxons to de- 
scribe a town at the mouth of a river ; thus Lechlade 
is the town at the mouth of the river Leach, and 
Cricklade, the town where the rivers Churn and 
Key join the Thames. We also preserve a record 
of this word in our verb " to ladle." 



20 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 



CHAPTEE II. 

Of Words which we have acquired from the Institu- 
tions or Customs of the Romans. 

I purpose in this chapter to consider some words 
which the institutions, customs, and habits of the 
Romans have supplied us with. The word prero- 
gative is one of these, and is used by us to signify 
an exclusive or peculiar privilege. The Romans, 
when they assembled to elect magistrates, make 
laws, or deliberate upon any public affairs, divided 
the people into centuries or hundreds, and in order 
that the votes might be more easily collected, they 
were taken by centuries. The names of the cen- 
turies were thrown into a box, and the box shaken, 
so that the lots might lie equally, and the century 
whose name was first drawn, was first asked its opi- 
nion, and was therefore called Prcerogativa, from 
the Latin words prce, before or first, and rogo, to 
ask. So when we speak of the royal prerogative, 
we speak of the right which appertains to the King 
or Queen of being first asked or consulted in what- 
ever concerns the business of the nation, and Lord 
Coke says that the word was adopted because, 
though an Act of Parliament passes both houses of 
Parliament, yet in order to make it a law, the Royal 
assent must be first asked and obtained. From this, 



Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 21 

the great prerogative of the crown, other powers and 
rights enjoyed by the ruling authority came to be 
called by the same name. 

We use the word corollary to denote a consequence 
or a conclusion deduced from something previously 
demonstrated, but the word in its earlier use signified 
a surplus, or addition, and is so used by Shakspeare 
in ' The Tempest,' Act iv., Scene 1. Prospero says, — 

" Well 
Now come, my Ariel, bring a corollary 
Bather than want a spirit." 

The word is handed down to us from the Romans, 
and was used by them in their dramatic entertain- 
ments to signify a reward given to the players, over 
and above their just hire, and was derived from the 
word corolla, a little crown or garland, such being 
the reward usually given. 

Our word confiscate comes from the Latin word 
fiscus, which originally signified a wicker-basket, 
used for squeezing olives or grapes. It afterwards 
signified a basket for holding money, and was sub- 
sequently used to denote the treasury of the Emperor, 
and then the money itself : thus confiscate now means 
to transfer private money or goods, as forfeited to 
the public treasury or exchequer. From the same 
source the French get their word fisc, the treasury 
or exchequer, and we and they the word fiscal. 

Amongst the Romans, those slaves who were 
emancipated, were called liberti and libertini, de- 



22 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 

noting that they were freed, and had the power of 
doing what they pleased, and so we now adopt the 
word libertine, to denote one who is free from all 
moral and religious restraint. Slaves who were born 
in the house of their masters were called ver nee : 
hence vernaculus, from whence we get our word ver- 
nacular, came to signify proper and peculiar to 
one's own country. Slaves employed to accompany 
boys to and from school were called JPcedagogi, 
from the Greek words nous, pais, a boy, and ayw, 
ago, to lead ; and hence the word pedagogue with 
us came to signify an instructor of boys. Slaves 
who were branded with a hot iron, as a punish- 
ment for theft, were called Stigmatici, from the 
Greek word ony^x, stigma, a brand, and hence we 
get our word stigmatize. 

When a Roman made his will, it was tied up with 
thread, and sealed; if he desired to alter it, he 
broke the seal and unsealed it, which was called 
resignare, to break the seal. The word resign 
thus came to signify to yield up, in order to be can- 
celled. Thus we say to resign the crown, when the 
king gives up the kingdom ; and resignation to the 
will of Providence is a submissive yielding up of 
ourselves to the Divine authority. 

In using the words tribe, tribune, tribunal, tribute, 
contribute, we little think that they all derive their 
origin from the Latin word tres, three ; and that in 
using these words we preserve a record of the ear- 



Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 23 

liest state of the Romans under Romulus, who 
divided the people into three divisions, and called 
them tribes, from their number. The tribune was 
an officer at the head of each tribe, the tribunal 
was the place of his residence, and came to signify 
a seat of justice ; the tribute was the sum paid by- 
each tribe to the common stock, towards the main- 
tenance of the state ; and contribution was the act of 
paying the tribute to this common stock. From the 
same source we get our words tributary ', 'that which 
pays tribute ; distribute, to allot or portion out, 
attribute in its early sense signifying to give a part 
or portion ; and hence the substantive attribute, 
something given, assigned, or ascribed. 

How often do we hear the word palliate made 
use of, without discerning the antiquity which it 
covers. As the Toga was the distinguishing part 
of the Roman dress, so was the Pallium that of the 
Greeks, and these habits were so peculiar to the 
two nations respectively, that " Palliatus" was used 
by the Romans to signify a Greek, as distinguished 
from " Togatus," a Roman. Palliatse was the name 
of plays in which the scene was laid in Greece, as 
Togatse was of those in which the scene was laid in 
Rome. The Pallium consisted of a short cloak, and 
thence to palliate is literally to cover with a cloak. 
At the age of seventeen the Roman youth of quality 
assumed the toga virilis, but up to that age, they 
wore the dress called toga prcetexta, which was a 



24 EOOTS AND KAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 

white garment bordered or edged with purple, the 
word prcetexta literally meaning, woven before. As 
the toga prcetexta was the dress used to cover the 
body, so in process of time the word prcetextus was 
used to signify a cover to conceal the thoughts, and 
hence our word pretext, a colour or motive for doing 
something. 

To assess, to impose a rate or tax, is by Johnson 
and Richardson derived from the Italian assesso, 
and we may have obtained the word immediately 
from this source, but the word comes originally from 
the Latin, censeo, to number. The census, among 
the Romans, did not at first signify the actual taxa- 
tion, but the numbering of the people, and the va- 
luation of their property, prior to the making of the 
rate. The latter no doubt followed the former very 
quickly, and so the word census afterwards came 
to denote the tax itself. In our translations of St. 
Luke ii. 1, the passage is, " that there went out a 
decree from Csesar Augustus that all the world 
should be taxed" — the word so translated, taxed, is 
in the Greek otKoypz(pa<j9ou, apographesthai, which 
merely means, should be enrolled or registered. In 
Wiclif 's Bible, 1380, the passage is rendered, " that 
all the world should be described" and in the 
Rheims Bible, 1582, " that the whole world should 
be enrolled," so that the decree of the Emperor 
really was, that the census or enrolment should be 
taken, in order that the tax might afterwards be 



Chap. II, OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 25 

imposed. It is quite clear that there is some fur- 
ther confusion in the translation of our Bibles, at 
this passage, for in the next verse it is thrown in by 
way of parenthesis, that this taxing (or numbering 
or enrolment, for the Greek word is the same as 
that used before) was first made when Cyrenius was 
governor of Syria. Now Cyrenius, or Quirinus, 
was not made governor of Syria until many years 
after the birth of our Saviour, and this enrolment, 
here mentioned by St. Luke, took place before our 
Saviour's birth. The solutions of this difficulty in 
the notes to Mant's Bible by Archdeacon Paley, 
Dean Prideaux, and Dr. Hammond, are not satis- 
factory ; neither do the notes to Scott's Bible satisfy 
me. The true solution seems to be, that our trans- 
lators did not select the appropriate meaning of the 
word TTpcorn in this passage which they translated 
first. The word signifies not only first, but before, 
and former, when used adverbially; and had the 
passage been rendered, " this taxing was made 
before Cyrenius was governor," or, " that this was a 
prior taxing to that made when Cyrenius was go- 
vernor," it would have removed all difficulty. It is 
evident that the passage was thrown in by the Evan- 
gelist, by way of parenthesis, and is not at all neces- 
sary to the sense of the passage. The reason of its 
introduction seems to have been, to distinguish this 
taxation of which he was speaking from that which 
subsequently took place, and which he records in 

c 



26 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 

the passage, Acts v. 37, " After this man, rose up 
Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew 
away much people after him." That the taxation 
spoken of Acts v. took place when Cyrenius was 
Governor of Syria, we know from "The Antiquities" 
of Josephus, Book xviii., ch. 1, where he says that 
Cyrenius came into Syria, being sent by Csesar to 
be a judge of that nation, and to take an account of 
their substance," adding immediately, "yet was 
there one Judas, a Gaulonite, who became zealous 
to draw the people to a revolt, who both said that 
this taxation was no better than an introduction to 
slavery, and exhorted the nation to assert their 
liberty," thus clearly identifying the taxation under 
Cyrenius with the taxing at which Judas revolted. 
There is no question, therefore, but that the taxa- 
tion referred to in Acts v. took place many years 
after the taxation referred to in Luke ii., and the 
second verse of the latter chapter was evidently in- 
serted to distinguish the one from the other. The 
masculine of the adjective Trpooros, protos (the femi- 
nine of which is, in the second chap, of St. Luke, 
translated first), occurs at 1 St. John xv. 30, where 
it is translated before. " He that cometh after me 
is preferred before rne, for he was before me ;" and, 
again, in the 15th chap, of St. John 18, we find the 
neuter of this adjective used adverbially, and trans- 
lated before. " If the world hate you, ye know that 
it hated me before it hated you." 



Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 27 

We meet with the word cense, signifying a tax, in 
many old writers, which seems first to have been 
corrupted into cess, and then into assess. The 
officer at Rome whose duty it was to take the ac- 
count of the different families and their possessions 
was called the Censor, and it was part of his duty 
to correct ill manners and punish misdemeanours of 
a private nature, which did not come under the cog- 
nisance of the civil magistrate ; thus, if one did not 
cultivate his ground properly, if a horse-soldier did 
not take proper care of the horse provided for him 
by the state, or if one lived too long unmarried, the 
duty of the Censor arose, and hence from the name 
of this officer, and his judgment in such matters, we 
acquired the words censure and censorious. 

In our word auspicious, derived from the Latin 
word aaspex, a compound of avis, a bird, and specio, 
to behold, we preserve a record of Roman super- 
stition. The auspex was an officer who foretold 
future events by observing the flight, chirping, or 
feeding of birds. In early times the different works 
of the husbandman were governed or regulated by 
observing the arrival and departure of birds, and in 
later times no affair of moment was undertaken by 
the Romans, nor did any magistrate among them 
enter upon the duties of his office until the birds had 
been consulted by means of these officers. If chickens 
fed greedily, it was considered a good omen ; if, on 
the contrary, they declined to eat, the omen was 

c 2 



28 



ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS 



Chap. II. 



deemed bad. In the first Punic War, the Roman 
Consul, Pulcher Claudius, consulted the officer in 
charge of the chickens, who reported that they would 
not eat, upon which the Consul ordered them to be 
thrown into the sea, saying, " Then let them drink." 
After this he engaged the enemy, was defeated, with 
the loss of his fleet, and was disgraced on his return 
to Rome. Though the word omen was used by the 
Romans indifferently, to signify good or ill luck, we 
use the word, and the adjective ominous, as indi- 
cative only of ill ; and we use the word abominable 
as descriptive of a thing, or of conduct which should 
be turned from, as from an ill omen. 

We popularly use the word annals to denote a 
simple record of events, as, when Gray speaks of 
" the short and simple annals of the poor ;" but 
among the Romans it had a much more important 
signification, and denoted the account of the public 
transactions of each year drawn up in form by the 
chief priest, and was derived from the Latin word 
annus, a year, and were consequently called annales. 
As these annales were the record of the year, so the 
kalendares among the Romans (whence our word 
calendar) signified the first days of each month, 
being derived by them from the Greek word kqcXsw, 
kaleo, to call, because the priests were accustomed to 
call the people together on the first day of each 
month, and to apprise them of the festivals, or days 
that were to be kept sacred during the month. 



Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 29 

Again, the words mimic and pantomime have 
descended to us from the Roman mimi, buffoons who 
entertained the people with representations by dumb 
show, in which everything was expressed by dancing 
and gestures, without speaking. With us the word 
discuss has no other meaning than to debate, but 
this is really the metaphorical meaning of the word, 
which comes from the Latin discutio, to shake apart ; 
and so to discuss is properly to shake apart, and 
thoroughly sift and examine a subject. The word 
is frequently found in Holland's Pliny in its primary 
meaning ; thus in book xx. ch. ix. he says, " The 
sudden mists and dimness which cometh over the 
eyesight is discussed and dispatched cleane, in case 
one do no more but chew cabbage in vinegar." 
Again, book xx. ch. xiii. he says, " that the juice of 
wild rue helpeth those that are hard of hearing, 
and discusseth the ringing sound in the ears." 

We use the word second in a variety of senses, yet 
if we investigate the derivation of the word, we shall 
perceive an uniformity of meaning in them all. The 
word comes from the Latin sequor, to follow ; thus 
second is that which followeth the first ; a second in 
a duel is he who followeth the principal ; a seconder 
of a motion is he that followeth the mover of it. The 
man who is second to none is one who followeth 
nobody ; a secondary or second-rate person is one 
who is contented to follow in an inferior place. The 
Romans used the word scrupulum, to denote a 



30 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 

minute of time, the scrupulum being a small pebble 
(originally, no doubt, used in reckoning), and they 
called the sixtieth part of a minute secundum scru- 
pulum, whence, by dropping the word scrupulum, 
we have applied the word second to denote the 
sexagesimal division of the minute. The scrupulum 
is described as a small pebble, such as found its way 
between the sandal and the foot, and occasioned 
difficulty or vexation to the foot-passenger; and 
hence the word scruple with us is applied to express 
a doubt or perplexity about small matters ; and scru- 
pulous, signifying literally full of little gravel stones, 
came to signify full of little doubts or hesita- 
tions. 

Abstemious comes from the two Latin words abs, 
without, and temetum, wine. It was a term applied 
to those who, from their natural aversion to wine, 
could not partake of the cup of the Eucharist, and 
the Calvinists allowed such to partake of the bread 
only. Pliny tells us, book xiv. ch. xiii. that "in 
ancient time women at Rome were not permitted to 
drink any wine," and he adds, that Fabius Pictor 
in his ' Annales,' reporteth, " that a certain Roman 
dame, a woman of good worship, was by her own 
kinsfolke famished and pined to death, for opening 
a cupboard wherein the keys of the wine-cellar lay, 
and that Cato doth record that hereupon arose the 
manner and custom that kinsfolk should kiss women 
when they met them, to know by their breath 



Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 31 

whether they smelled of temetum, for so they used 
in those days to term wine." 

We preserve a record of the primitive mode of 
making payment of the price of an article, by weigh- 
ing the silver to be given for it, in our verb to spend, 
from the Latin word pendo, to weigh ; and the same 
record is preserved in our word expenses. Again, 
the word pensive, which we use to signify thoughtful, 
literally signifies one who weighs well a subject, and 
is near of kin to our word ponder, v/hich comes 
from the same source. So also stipend is also de- 
rived from the same Latin word to weigh, and stips, 
the Latin word for money (which was so called from 
being stowed away in a cellar, that it might occupy 
less room), being derived from the Latin word stipo, 
to fill up close. We use the word pecuniary as re- 
lating to money, the word being derived from the 
Latin word pecus, cattle, which represented the 
wealth of the ancients. Servius Tullius stamped 
pieces of brass with the images of cattle, oxen, 
swine, &c, which pieces passed current as money ; so 
the word peculate is derived from the same source, 
and though now used to denote the pilfering of the 
public money, formerly denoted the stealing of 
cattle. Peculiar, belonging to any one, to the ex- 
clusion of all others, comes from the Latin word pecu- 
lium, which is derived from the same word pecus, 
cattle, and was that stock of cattle which a son, with 
the consent of his father, or a slave, with the consent 



32 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 

of his master, acquired and retained to his own use ; 
and when money became more plentiful, the signifi- 
cation of the word became extended from cattle to 
money, and other property. In the Roman Catholic 
convents the word peculium means those goods which 
each religious member of a house reserves to and 
possesses for his particular use. 

The word retaliate also comes to us from the 
Romans, being derived from the Latin word talis, 
like, and among the Romans the lex talionis, law of 
retaliation, awarded a punishment similar to the in- 
jury inflicted, such as an eye for an eye, a limb for a 
limb, &c. But this punishment, though decreed by 
the Twelve Tables, was rarely inflicted, since the law 
also allowed the redemption of the punishment by a 
money payment. This legislation seems to have 
been almost identical with the Levitical law, which 
in words authorised the authorities to execute a 
punishment similar to the offence, but also per- 
mitted, except in the case of murder, pecuniary 
satisfaction to be substituted for the punishment. 

The Romans had an officer called the Prefect of 
the Praetorian Cohorts. This office was originally a 
military one ; but the Emperor Constantine created 
four of these officers, and made their offices civil, 
taking from them the command of the soldiers, and 
dividing among them the care of the whole empire. 
Under each of these were several substitutes or 
deputies, who had the charge of certain districts, 






Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 33 

which they called dioceses, from the Greek word 
(ttoixeeu, dioikeo, to govern ; from whence, in the 
ecclesiastical division of our country, we have adopted 
the word diocese, to denote a district presided over 
by a bishop. 

Johnson derives the word porcelain from the French 
pour cent annees, for a hundred years, and Richardson 
says that China dishes were so called, perhaps be- 
cause they are believed to be buried for many years 
in cells. Neither of these derivations seems to be 
very satisfactory. The true derivation will, I think, 
be found to be from porcus, the Latin word for a 
pig. In consequence of the aid afforded by the 
Portuguese to the Chinese against the pirates who 
infested their coasts, they obtained from the Chinese 
liberty to establish a settlement at Macao, and from 
thence by way of Portugal China ware was first im- 
ported into Europe, and was called porcellana, the 
name given by the Portuguese in the East to the 
cowrie shells (called by the Germans porcellanen, 
and by the French porcelaines), and which name was 
so transferred to the Chinese cups, as indicative of 
their transparent shell-like texture. In our own 
language these shells bear the same name. In 
Holland's translation of Pliny, book ix. ch. li., 
speaking of fishes, he mentions porcelains, and in 
book xiii. ch. xii., speaking of the manufacture of 
paper, he says, "It is polished with some tooth, 
or else with a porcellane shell." Mr. Gray, the 

c 3 



34 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 

naturalist, states that these shells are called porcetti 
in Italy, and adds, that porcellain, the common name 
of the cowries, is taken from the fancied resemblance 
of these shells to pigs ; thus we see that our porcelain 
cups and our porkers are both derived from the same 
Latin wor&poi-cus, a pig. In like manner the Romans 
gave the name porca to the ridge of land raised by 
the action of the plough, from the same fancied re- 
semblance to a pig's back ; such ridges were also 
called lira, and the Romans were at great pains to 
make the furrows straight, and of equal breadth. 
The ploughman who went crooked was said delirare, 
to depart from the straight ridge, and thus by a 
metaphor the word was applied to a person com- 
mitting an error, or deviating from the right course. 
We meet with the word so used in Horace, book i. 
epistle i. ver. 14 — " Quicquid delirant reges plec- 
tuntur Achivi" ("Whatever errors kings commit, 
the people suffer for them"), and we have extended 
the application of the word still further ; for we say 
that a person of wandering mind is delirious. The 
ploughman who went crooked was also by the 
Romans said prcevaricare, derived from the Latin 
word varus, not walking straight. Horace, book i. 
sat. iii. ver. 47, says, " that an affectionate father 
conceals as much as possible the bodily defects of his 
children. If he has a son who squints, he says he 
merely blinks ; he calls another who is a dwarf his 
chicken, and calls the third varus, walking crooked, 



Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 35 

when the boy is bandy-legged. This word varus came 
to be applied to a person who did not go straight in 
anything he had undertaken, and thus prcevaricator 
was applied by the Romans to an advocate who be- 
trayed the cause of his client, and by neglect or collu- 
sion assisted his opponent, and we now apply the word 
to denote a shuffler, or one who plays fast and loose. 

The French use the word in the same sense as we 
do, but it also has with them its former meaning, 
namely, one who betrays his trust. 

The word varicose has the same origin, and sig- 
nifies veins unnaturally tortuous. 

The Romans gave the name of interpreted to per- 
sons employed by candidates for office to bargain 
with the people for their votes, and hence we get 
our word interpreter, denoting one who acts between 
two persons, to explain the words of the one to the 
other. 

The act of the candidate going round to the 
houses of the voters to solicit votes was called 
ambiendo, going round, and hence the word am- 
bition with us has acquired the signification of a 
desire for preferment or honour ; and from the same 
source we get our word ambient, going round, or 
surrounding. 

The word province, in such general use with us, 
comes, as I believe, from the Latin words pro, far, 
and vinco, to conquer, and signified with the Romans 
a distant country conquered by them, and to which 



36 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 

the Senate sent a governor from Rome. The district 
in France now called Provence derives its name 
from the designation Provineia, given to it by the 
Romans after its conquest, and from being at first 
a mere descriptive term has now come to be appro- 
priated as a proper name. The word Provineia was 
also used by the Romans metaphorically to signify 
the office or business of any one. Thus, if a Consul 
was charged with the conduct of a war, it was called 
his province or duty ; and we retain the word in this 
sense also in our language. Thus Pope, in the 
' Rape of the Lock,' chap. 2, says : 

" Our humbler province is to tend the fair, 
Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care." 

Among the Romans books were not divided into 
pages and bound up as they now are, but a skin 
was written on continuously and rolled up upon a 
staff or cylinder, fastened at one end of it, in the 
same manner as large maps are now with us ; and 
from the Latin word, describing this process of roll- 
ing, volvo, came their word volumen, from whence 
we have obtained our word volume, and also our 
word voluble, meaning in its primary sense easy to 
be rolled, and afterwards expressing fluency, or 
words rolling out without difficulty. 

The act of unrolling a book for the purpose of 
reading was called evolvere, and hence we get our 
word evolve, to unfold or disentangle. If one skin 



Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 37 

were not large enough to contain the whole writing, 
another skin was joined on at the end, and this 
additional skin was called scheda, from whence we 
get our word sheet and schedule. 

The Romans adopted the word papyrus to denote 
paper made from that rush, but when it ceased to 
be so made it acquired another name, for Pliny 
(book xiii., ch. 12), after giving a full description of 
making paper in Egypt, says "that papyrus was 
the material from which the Roman paper was pre- 
pared, but when that material was taken away, the 
manufactured article received the name of charta ; 
this word they derived from the Greek x^prrts, 
chartes, from yjx.%a.aau, charasso, to inscribe, and 
signified an article on which letters were inscribed. 
From this word we get our words chart, charter, 
cartel, cartoon, a painting on thick paper. From 
the same source we get character and characteristic ; 
character, from its general sense, signifying an 
engraved mark or figure, as numeral characters 
engraved to express numbers, each figure conveying 
a distinct meaning ; and when the word is applied 
as descriptive of a person, it denotes something 
peculiar to such person, distinguishing him from 
others, and as it were engraved upon him ; and 
when used as a verb it preserves its original mean- 
ing : thus Shakspeare says, — 

" Rosalind ! these trees shall be my hooks, 
And in these hooks my thoughts I '11 character.'''' 



38 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. II. 

The manufacture of paper in England is com- 
paratively of recent date. A paper-mill is said to 
have existed in Hertfordshire in the reign of Henry 
VII. ; however this may be, coarse brown paper 
was manufactured in England in the year 1588, by 
John Spielman, a German, who was knighted by 
Queen Elizabeth in that year, and to whom she 
granted the manor of Portbridge or Bycknore, near 
Dartford in Kent, and a license for the sole gather- 
ing, for ten years, of all rags necessary for the 
making of such paper. He erected a paper-mill at 
Dartford, and died in the year 1607. 

Fuller, who was born 1608 and died 1661, com- 
plains that the making of paper in England was not 
sufficiently encouraged, " considering the vast sums 
of money expended in our land for paper out of 
Italy, France, and Germany, which might be lessened 
were it made in our own nation." The manufacture 
of paper seems shortly afterwards to have received 
some protection, for we find a statute in the reign 
of William and Mary, imposing duties on foreign 
paper; and by a statute passed in the tenth year 
of Queen Anne's reign certain duties are imposed 
on all paper imported from abroad ; and amongst 
other descriptions of paper we find in this statute 
" Genoa foolscap fine " and " Genoa foolscap second," 
the word foolscap being a corruption of the Italian 
joglio capa, a chief or large sheet of paper, or first- 
sized sheet; and so this word has no connexion, 



Chap. II. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 3$ 

as is too often supposed, with the persons in the 
French epigram, of which I have somewhere met 
with the following translation : — 

" The world of fools has such a store, 
That he who would not see an ass 
Must bide at home, and holt his door, 
And break his looking-glass." 

The Italian word foglio, before mentioned, is derived 
from the Latin folium, a leaf of a tree, leaves 
having been originally used for writing upon — the 
record of which we preserve in speaking of the 
leaves of a book ; from the same Latin word folium, 
derived from the Greek word QuKKov, a leaf, we get 
our word foliage. 



40 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 



CHAPTEK III. 

Of Words derived from the Names of Places or 
Persons. 

Many articles derive their names from places or 
persons ; thus, the wine which we call Madeira, is 
from the Spanish word Madera, a wood, such 
having been the name which Gonzalves Zarco 
gave on its discovery, in 1420, to the island from 
whence we obtain that wine, the island being then 
covered by an immense forest. In like manner, 
Sherry derives its name from Xeres, a town of An- 
dalusia in Spain, pronounced Jeres. The cherry, 
called by the French Cerise, from Cerasus (now 
Kheresoun), a seaport in Asiatic Turkey, situated 
on a gulf in the Black Sea, from whence it was 
introduced into Europe by the Romans under 
Lucullus, in the year 73 b.c. Pliny, in book 
xv. ch. 25, says: "Before the time that Lu- 
cullus defeated King Mithridates, there were no 
cherry trees in Italy ; he was the man that first 
brought them out of Pontus, and furnished Italy 
so well with them, that in six and twenty years 
other lands had part thereof, even as far as Bri- 
tain, beyond the ocean." From the Dalmatian 
Maraschi, cherry, we get the name Maraschino, 
given to the liquo~ gf European celebrity, which 



Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 41 

the Austrians distil from it. In like manner, Jalap 
derives its name from Xalapa, a town in Mexico, 
and the seat of government for the state of Vera 
Cruz, in the neighbourhood of which the plant was 
discovered, being the root of the Tpomea. Choco- 
late comes from Choco, a province in Mexico, where 
the Cocoa tree abounds, and from whence it was 
imported into Europe, about 1520. Pheasant, from 
the river Phasis, in Colchis, as we learn from Mar- 
tial, book xxx. ep. 72. Pistol, from the town of 
Pistoja, in Tuscany, where, Sir James Turner (in 
his 'Pallas Armata,' pub. 1670) informs us, this 
weapon was first manufactured in the reign of 
Henry VIII. , by Camillo Vitelli. It is probable 
that in 1541 this weapon was unknown in England, 
as it is not mentioned in an Act of Parliament 
passed in that year, "concerning crossbows and 
hand-guns ;" but it would seem was shortly after- 
wards introduced, as we meet with the word in a 
proclamation by Queen Elizabeth, 1575 ; and pistols 
are mentioned as articles of English manufacture and 
export, in the act of 12 Charles II. chap. 4 (1660). 
In our word chalybeate, which we obtain from the 
Greek %aXv^, in Latin chalybs, signifying iron, 
we preserve the name of Chalybes, once a very 
powerful people of Asia Minor, who harassed the 
10,000 Greeks in their retreat from Cunaxa, and 
whose country abounded in iron mines. Again, we 
learn from Arethas, who wrote an account of Bi- 



42 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 

thynia, that the stone which we call Calcedony, de- 
rived its name from Chalcedon, an ancient city of 
Bithynia, opposite Constantinople. In like manner, 
Agate is derived from the Greek word a%«r?}s, 
Achates, a river in Sicily, on the banks and in the 
bed of which these stones were abundant. They 
are, however, found in abundance in our own 
country, especially at Aberystwith, in Cardigan- 
shire, and at Kinnoul, near Perth, in Scotland, 
where they bear the more simple name of Scotch 
pebbles. 

Camden, in his ' Britannia,' p. 971, tells us that 
the Sandpiper, which we call the Knot, derived 
its name from King Canute, or Knute, to which 
Drayton, in his ' Polyolbion,' refers in the following 
passage : 

" The Knot that called was Canutus, bird of old, 
Of that great King of Danes his name that still doth hold, 
His appetite to please that far and near was sought 
For him, as some have said, from Denmark hither brought." 

Pliny informs us that the serpent called Boa, 
derives its name from Bos, a cow, giving as a 
reason, "this serpent liveth at the first of kine's 
milk." 

The pound Troy derived its name from Troyes, a 
city of Champagne, where it was a standard weight. 
The ounce of this weight was brought from Grand 
Cairo into Europe about the time of the Crusades, 
and was first adopted at Troyes ; " la libre de 



Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 43 

Troy " is used with us as early as 1414, in the 
second statute of 2 Hen. V. ch. 4. In like manner, 
the towns of Cologne and Toulouse had their 
pounds, which were standard weights. Copper 
derives its name from the island of Cyprus, which 
was discovered by the Phoenicians (according to 
Eratosthenes, the Librarian of Alexandria) about 
2000 years before the Christian era. At this time 
the island was so full of wood, that it could not be 
tilled, and the Phoenicians cut down the wood for 
smelting the copper, with which the island abounded. 
The island is said to have derived its name from 
Cypros, the name of a shrub or tree, with which it 
abounded, and which is supposed to have been the 
same as our Cypress. 

Worsted derived its name from Worsted, a parish, 
and formerly a market-town in Norfolk, where 
there were formerly extensive manufactories of this 
article. In the ' Parliamentary Gazetteer of Eng- 
land and "Wales/ it is said " Norwich is the most 
ancient manufacturing town in the United King- 
dom, and has been noted for its woollen fabrics 
since the reign of Henry I., when a colony of 
Flemings settled in the city, and got the long 
wool spun at the village of Worsted, nine miles to 
the north, whence the article took its name. We 
find worsted mentioned in the statute of 17 Richard 
II. (1393), and again as being made at Norwich in 
the statute of 7 Edward IV. (1467). So Blankets 



44 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 

derive their name from Thomas Blanket, who in 
1340 established a loom in his own house in Bristol, 
for the manufacture of this article. His house, it is 
believed, was in Touker Street (now called Tucker 
Street), and which derived its name from the Touker, 
the ancient name of cloth-workers, and who were so 
named from the river Toucques, near Abbeville, in 
Normandy, from which country the manufacture of 
cloth was brought to Bristol and the West of Eng- 
land, early in the reign of Edward L, as we learn 
from Dallaway's 'Antiquities,' pp. 79 and 179. In 
the statute 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, chap. 12 (1555), 
cloth-workers are styled Tuckers, and their mills 
tucking-milh. 

In our word Spaniel we preserve the record that 
this species of dog originally came from Spain, 
though at what period cannot now be ascertained. 
The Latin poet Nemesianus, who nourished about 
the year 281 of our era, in his ' Cynegeticon, or 
book concerning hunting-dogs,' apparently speaking 
of the spaniel, says, " Quorum proles de sanguine 
manat Ibero " (whose stock sprung from Spanish 
blood) ; and the celebrated naturalist, Ulysses Al- 
drovandus, who was born in 1527 and died in 1605, 
gives two sketches of the spaniel, both of which he 
calls Oanis Hispanicus, "the Spanish dog." 

Mummery is derived from Mahomeria, the temple 
of Mahomet, and was the term used in ridicule of 
the gestures and songs practised by the followers 



Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 45 

of Mahomet, and the word afterwards came to de- 
note any kind of foolery ; and gibberish, anciently 
written gebrish, took the name from Geber, a Sabean 
of Harran, in Mesopotamia, who lived in the eighth 
century, and wrote four tracts on Chemistry, having 
the object of teaching the method of finding the philo- 
sopher's stone. We learn from Pliny, book vi. ch. 
20, that the Topaz derives its name from Topazos, 
an island in the Red Sea, where this gem was found 
in abundance. 

The fruit which we call Currants derives its 
name from Corinth, and was formerly spelt Corinths. 
Stowe mentions them as Corinths, commonly called 
Currants. 

Ermine derives its name from Armenia, and in 
1660 we find, in the statute of 12 Charles II. chap. 
4, this fur written Armins ; so in Littleton's Latin 
Dictionary, seventeen years later, it is called pellis 
Armeniana, Armenian skin. In Italian, the weasel 
producing the fur is called Armellina, and in the 
Spanish Armino and Armelina. 

Gin, the contraction of the name Geneva, we are 
told was first made in that city, and thence derived 
its name. A similar spirit was afterwards manu- 
factured by the Dutch, and acquired the name of 
Hollands, from which country, also, the linen, called 
by us Holland, derives its name. 

Galvanism took its name from Aloysius Galvani, 
who was born at Bologna, 1737, and who, about 



46 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 

1763, was appointed public lecturer in the Univer- 
sity of that city, and who, by a mere accident, dis- 
covered that all animals have within them an elec- 
tricity of a peculiar nature, to which he gave the 
name of " animal electricity," but which has since 
acquired the name of Galvanism, from its dis- 
coverer. 

Alessandro Vblta, professor of natural philosophy, 
in the university of Pavia, made further discoveries 
in the science of electricity, and from him we acquire 
the name of Voltaic battery. 

The Carraway plant preserves in its name a 
record of its native country, Caria, as we learn 
from Pliny, book xix. ch. 8. The name which we 
have given to the Turkey indicates that we ob- 
tained it from that country, though it was not a 
native of it, the bird being peculiar to the con- 
tinent of America, from whence it was probably 
introduced into Europe by the Spaniards. This 
bird is called by the Italians and Spaniards G-allo 
d' India, by the French Coq d'Inde, and by the 
Germans Indianische Mahn, all preserving the name 
of India, originally given by the Europeans to 
America. Robertson, in his ' History of America,' 
says that Columbus, on landing on this continent, 
found gold, cotton, and a root resembling rhubarb, 
the alligator, and rich plumaged birds ; and consi- 
dering that these productions were peculiar to the 
East Indies, tenaciously adhered to the opinion that 



Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 47 

he had landed at the eastern extremity of India, 
and the Spaniards and all other nations in Europe 
adopted that opinion ; and, accordingly, in an 
agreement made by Ferdinand and Isabella with 
Columbus, the name of Indies was given to the 
newly discovered countries ; and after the error 
which gave rise to this opinion was detected, and 
the true position of the new world ascertained, the 
name was continued, and the name of West Indies 
was given by all the people of Europe to the coun- 
try, and that of Indians to the inhabitants, by which 
name the American aborigines continue to be called 
to this day. The name of the drug which we call 
Rhubarb, is the corruption of the Latin words Rha 
Barbara (foreign Rha), and preserves a record of 
the river known to the ancients as the Rha (now the 
Volga, in Russia), on the banks of which the plant 
producing the root furnishing the drug was sup- 
posed to grow. This drug is mentioned as Rha- 
barbarum in the statute 12 Charles II. ch. 4 (1660). 
It is somewhat surprising that although this drug 
has been used for centuries, the native place of the 
plant producing it is still unknown to us. 

Our word Shallot, frequently written eschalot, 
comes to us from the French, but the word is de- 
rived from the name given to the vegetable by the 
Romans ascalonia, and which was so given because 
the plant was a native of AsJcelon, in Palestine, one 
of the fenced cities of the Philistines, and was pro- 



48 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 

bably introduced into Rome after the destruction of 
Jerusalem by the Romans. 

How completely have the words Bedlam and 
Bridewell become incorporated into our language to 
denote places for the reception of insane persons 
and vagrants, and how currently do we use these 
words without considering the modes by which they 
acquired their present signification. Stowe tells us 
that Simon Fitzmary, sheriff of London, 1247, 
founded the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem, to 
consist of canons, with brethren and sisters, to re- 
ceive the Bishop of Bethlehem and the canons and 
messengers of the church of Bethlehem, whensoever 
they should have occasion to travel to England. 
On the dissolution of monastic establishments in 
England, King Henry VIII. (1545) granted this 
priory to the city of London, who converted it into 
a house or hospital for the cure of lunatics, and this 
name Bethlehem, corrupted into Bedlam, came to 
signify a lunatic asylum. Then as regards Bride- 
ivell, I would observe that before the Reformation 
there existed in London and various parts of the 
country holy wells, the waters of which were sup- 
posed to be endowed with peculiar virtues, and which 
were, in consequence, much resorted to by devotees 
and superstitious persons. St. Bride's well, near 
the church of St. Bride, in Fleet Street, London, was 
one of these. In the vicinity of this well anciently 
stood a royal palace, which from this well took the 



Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 49 

name of Brideivell Palace, where King John held 
his courts, and where succeeding monarchs resided. 
Henry VIII. repaired it, and resided in it as late 
as 1529, but it shortly afterwards fell into decay, 
and in 1552 the martyr Ridley, then Bishop of 
London, petitioned Secretary Cecil to grant it to the 
city of London, which petition being granted, the 
city, in 1553, converted it into a house of correction 
for disorderly persons, and thus such houses acquired 
the name of Brideivells. 

It is somewhat curious to trace the origin of the 
word farriers. Johnson says it came to us from 
the French ferrier, and it is true that it is of 
French origin, for we acquired the word from the 
name of the noble Norman family of Ferrers. Stowe, 
in treating of the " Farriers' Company," tells us 
that Henry de Ferrariis or Ferrers, a Norman born, 
came over into England with William the Con- 
queror, who gave to him, as being his farrier or 
master of the horse, the honour of Tutbury in the 
county of Stafford. Robert de Ferrers, his son, 
succeeded to his father's possessions, and was created, 
in 1137, Earl of Derby, and his family bore for 
arms six horseshoes, in allusion to their original 
vocation. The word far r rier was formerly spelt with 
us ferrer. Blundeville, in his c Address to the 
Gentlemen of England,' written in the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth, says in his fourth book, " All 
horses for the most part come into their decay 

D 



50 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 

sooner than they should do by one of these four 
ways, that is to say, either for the lack of being 
well bred, or through the rashness of the rider, the 
negligence of the keeper, or else through the un- 
skilfulness of the ferrer ;" and again he mentions 
" Martin Ghelly of Aston, called Martin Alman, 
chief ferrer to the Queen's Majesty." In Holland's 
' Pliny,' book 33, ch. 11, we find the following pas- 
sage, " and within the remembrance of man, even 
in this age, Poppsea the Empress, wife to Nero the 
Emperor, was known to cause her ferrers ordinarily 
to shoe her coach-horses and other palfries for her 
saddle with cleane gold." 

The Bezant, which was the chief gold coin cur- 
rent throughout Europe for many centuries, appears 
to have been first coined at Constantinople, the an- 
cient Byzantium of the western Emperors, and 
thence acquired its name. 

The Sedan chair takes its name from the town of 
Sedan in France, where they were first invented, 
and were introduced into England in 1634 by Sir 
Saunders Buncombe, who, in the ' Strafford Letters,' 
vol. i. p. 336, is stated to have obtained a patent 
for their manufacture. 

Mr. Trench, in his book ' On the Study of 
Words,' dismisses the word calico by informing us 
that it took its name from Calicut in the East. The 
word, however, seems entitled to a little further 
notice. Dr Buchanan Hamilton, in his work en- 



Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 51 

titled ' A Journey through Mysore, Canara, and 
Malabar,' says that " when Cherusman Permal (the 
first monarch of Malabar) had divided the country 
among his nobles, and had no principality remaining 
to bestow on the ancestor of the Tamuri (i. e. the 
Rajah), he gave that chief his sword, with all the 
territory in which a cock crowing at a small temple 
in the town could be heard. This formed the 
original dominions of the Tamuri, and was called 
Calicudo, or the Cock-crowing." Thus, therefore, 
we arrive at the meaning of the word Calico. We 
learn from Robertson's l India,' that the seaport town 
of Calicut was the place at which the Portuguese 
under Vasco de Gama landed on the 22nd May, 
1498, and they probably gave the name to the 
article so called, and communicated it to the 
Spaniards, in whose language it is called Calicud 
or Calicut, and we in all probability obtained it 
through Spain, and corrupted the word into calico. 
Mr. Trench also informs us that the word tariff is 
derived from Tarifa, a fortified promontory in Spain 
commanding the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea, 
from whence the Moors watched merchant ships 
frequenting that sea, and levied duties on the mer- 
chandise passing in and out of the straits, according 
to a fixed scale ; and he adds that the word is of 
Moorish origin, but does not give us that origin. 
Richardson, in his Dictionary, quoting Menage, says 
that the word is Arabic, from d'araf, to know. The 

d 2 



52 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 

word, indeed, is of Moorish origin, but the etymo- 
logy of Menage is not the true one. The word is a 
monument of the conquest of Spain by the Arabs, 
the town Tarifa (from which it is derived) taking its 
name from Tarif Ibn Malek Almaferi, the Arabian 
Viceroy of Africa, who on the 30th of April, a.d. 
711, landed at the promontory (then called Calpe), 
and shortly afterwards conquered Spain. The Arabs 
changed the name of Calpe to Jezira Tarif (the 
Island of Tarif), and in later times it became 
Tarif. In like manner the Rock of Gibraltar is 
another record of the same conquest, the name 
Gibraltar being the corruption of the Moorish words 
Gibel Tarif (the Mountain of Tarif). 

Lydius lapis was the name given by the Romans 
to the stone which attracts iron, from the circum- 
stance of its being found in Lydia, and which we 
have corrupted into our loadstone. Pliny, in his 
34th book, tells us " that this stone is to be found 
in Biskay scattered here and there in small quan- 
tities, but it is not that true magnet or loadstone 
indeed which groweth in one continued rock." 
This word magnet, in Latin magnes, took its name 
from the city of Magnesia in Lydia, where it was 
found. This kingdom of Lydia was anciently called 
MaBonia, through which ran the river Mccander, 
remarkable for its tortuous course, and hence we 
have acquired our word meander. 

We reid that Eumenes, the second king of Per- 



Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Do 

gamus, died B.C. 159, having embellished the city 
of Pergamus and founded a library there, which 
became second in importance only to that of Alex- 
andria, and that Ptolemy Epiphanes, becoming 
jealous lest the library at Pergamus should rival 
that of Alexandria, prohibited the export of papyrus 
from Egypt. The art of preparing skins for writing 
consequently improved at Pergamus, and such skins 
were called by the Romans Charta Pergamena, 
from which the Spaniards acquired their word per- 
gami?w, the French their word parchemin, and we 
our word parchment, 

In like manner our word cordwainer is derived 
from the city of Cordova (anciently spelt Cordova), 
the capital of Andalusia, where was manufactured a 
celebrated leather, cordoban, which was a prepara- 
tion of goat-skins. From this source the French 
get their word for shoemaker, cordonnier, and we 
our word cordwainer. This celebrated leather, having 
been first prepared at Cordova by the Moors when 
masters of Granada, is still manufactured by them 
in their empire of Morocco, and has now taken that 
name. We find this leather mentioned in the 
'Coventry Mysteries' — 

" Of ffine Cordewan, a goodly peyre of long pikyd Schon 
Hosyn enclosyd of the most costlyous cloth of crenscyn " 

(crimson) : the word also occurs in most of our early 
writers. 

We use the word milliner, to describe one who 



54 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 

sells ladies' dresses and ribbons. In Littleton's 
' Latin and English Dictionary,' published in 1677, 
a milliner is defined to be "a Jack of all trades," 
and "one who sells a thousand different sorts of 
things," as if the word were derived from mille, a 
thousand ; but this derivation is, 1 think, clearly 
erroneous, for Stowe tells us these persons were so 
called from Milan, in Italy, whence the commo- 
dities they dealt in chiefly came, such as "owches, 
brooches, agglets, spurs, caps, glasses, &c." He 
adds, "that in Edward VI. 's reign there were not 
above a dozen of them in all London ; but within 
forty years after, about the year 1580, from the City 
of Westminster along to London, every street be- 
came full of them." He states that some of the 
wares sold by these shopkeepers were, " gloves made 
in France or Spain ; kerseys of Flanders' dye, 
French cloth or Fruzado ouches, brooches, aggletts, 
made in Venice or Milan ; daggers, swords, knives, 
girdles of the Spanish make ; glasses, painted cruses, 
dials, tables, cards, balls, puppets, penners, ink- 
hornes, toothpicks, silk bottoms, silver bottoms, fine 
earthen pots, pins, points, hawksbells, saltcellars, 
spoons, and dishes of tin, w T hich made such a show 
in the passengers' eyes, that they could not but gaze 
on them and buy some of these knicknacks, though 
to no purpose necessary ; of which trade and trifles, 
a writer in the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign, 
makes this complaint, — I mervail no man taketh 



Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 55 

heed to it, what number of trifles cometh hither 
from beyond the seas, that we might either clean 
spare, or else make them within our realm, for the 
which we either pay inestimable treasure every year, 
or else exchange substantial wares, and necessary 
for them, for the which we might receive great 
treasure." These persons so called milliners, were 
also called haberdashers or hurrers, and were incor- 
porated in the year 1447. 

I shall conclude this chapter with the word ala- 
baster, which almost all the dictionaries, Greek, 
Latin, and English, derive from the Greek a, a, 
without ; and XaCoo, labe (a handle), and render the 
word into English, as a box without handles for 
holding ointment ; but this seems to be a fanciful 
derivation, as the material from which these boxes 
were made seems to have been called alabaster, 
when in its rough unmanufactured state. It is true 
that the boxes were called alabasters, no doubt from 
their having been originally made of this stone, and 
they were so called, although made of gold, or of 
any other material. In the passages St. Matt. 
xxvi. 7, St. Mark xiv. 3, and St. Luke vii. 37, ren- 
dered in our translation an alabaster box, the Greek 
words used are aXocfiaareov pupou, alabastron murou, 
literally, an alabaster of myrrh, the word being 
used as a substantive, and the same words pre- 
cisely occur, in the third book of Herodotus, ch, 
xx., wherein he records the presents sent by Cam- 



56 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. III. 

byses to the king of Ethiopia ; and in Theocritus, 
Idyll xv., line 114, we read of "golden alabasters, 
full of myrrh of Syria" — 2vg/« Vs [avqco %pvazC oCKoc- 
Qxvrpa,. It would seem from the following passages, 
that this peculiar stone derived its name from a 
place in Egypt called Alabastrum, where it was 
found. Pliny, in his 36th book, ch. viii., speaking 
of the onyx-stone, says, " this onyx-stone, or ony- 
chites, some name alabastrites, whereof they use for 
to make hollow boxes and pots, to receive sweet 
perfumes and ointments. This cassidronic, or ala- 
baster, is found about Thebes in Egypt, and Da- 
mascus in Syria, and this alabaster is whiter than 
the rest ;" and again, in his 37th book, ch. x., he 
says, " The stone alabastrites is found about Ala- 
bastrum, a citie in Egypt, and Damasco in Syria ; 
white of colour it is, and entermeddled with sundry 
colours." Pliny, in book v., ch. 9, gives us pretty 
nearly the situation of this city Alabastrum ; he 
commences by describing the towns of Egypt from 
Syene, its ancient southern boundary, and following 
the course of the Nile he reaches Ptolemais and 
Panapolis : he then proceeds, " Also on the Libyan 
coast, Lycon, where the hills do bound Thebais, soon 
after, these towns of Mercury, Alabastron, Canum, 
and that of Hercules, before spoken of," so that it is 
clear that Alabastron was situated between Pano- 
polis and Heracleopolis, and could not have been 
far from Hermopolis, lat. 28, Ion. 31. What the 



Chap. III. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 57 

shape of these alabasters was we also learn from 
Pliny, who, in his 9th book, ch. xxxv., describing 
the pearls called Elenchi, says they were "fastigiata 
longitudine alabastrorum figura in pleniorem orbem 
desinentes," which Holland translates " long and 
pointed upwards, growing downward broader and 
broader like a pear, or after the manner of alabaster 
boxes." 

Mr. Layard, in his ' Discoveries in the Ruins of 
Nineveh and Babylon,' published in 1853, gives at 
p. 197, a drawing of an alabaster vase found at 
Nimroud, which he describes as being seven inches 
high, and adds, " and was probably used for holding 
some ointment or cosmetic." It appears from p. 
200 of the same work, that after Mr. Layard's de- 
parture from Assyria, a similar alabaster jar was 
discovered, and Colonel Rawlinson states, " that 
remains of preserves were found in it, and conjec- 
tured from this circumstance that the room in which 
it was found had been a kitchen. The drawing 
which Mr. Layard has given of the jar found by 
him, may well Le said to be " pear-shaped," and 
why therefore should not these jars be the same as 
the alabasters containing ointments referred to by 
Pliny and St. Matthew, by Herodotus and Theo- 
critus? That which Colonel Rawlinson took for 
preserves was much more likely to have been oint- 
ment, as the latter would endure longer than the 
former. 

T) 3 



58 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Of Words the Etymology of which is obscured by 
reason of the original spelling having been cor- 
RUPTED. 

In many instances we have abridged words in our 
language by dropping a letter or syllable, and in 
others we have changed one or more letters, and in 
consequence the origin of such words has become 
somewhat obscured. The word strange is one of 
these. This word was formerly written estrange, 
and its origin was then apparent as coming from the 
French estrange, from the Latin extraneus, of ano- 
ther country. In Hollingshed, vol. vi. p. 446, we 
find the word as originally spelt. " This prelate 
(the Archbishop of Dublin), after that he had con- 
tinued well near the space of five years in the see, 
was sore appalled by reason of an estrange and 
wonderful dream ;" so stranger was formerly estr anger. 
In Nicolls's translation of Thucydides, published in 
1550, fol. 58, he says, "And having with them 
souldyars, estrangers, which Pissithnes and the Ar- 
cadians had sent them." We still preserve the 
original spelling in our word estrange, and it would 
seem that Shakspeare well knew the connexion be- 
tween the words estrange and strange when he wrote 
this passage — 



Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 59 

" How comes it now, my husband, oh ! 
How comes it ; 

That thou art thus estranged from thyself? 
Thyself I call it, being strange to me." 

We may in vain search for the origin of our word 
dropsy, unless we first restore it to its original spell- 
ing, hydropsy, and then we at once get the derivation 
of it from the Greek vocop, udor (water). Holling- 
shed, vol. vi. p. 8, speaking of the virtues of brandy, 
says, "it lighteneth the mind, it quickeneth the 
spirits, it cureth the hydropsy" &c. The French, in 
their word hydropisie, and the Spaniards, in their 
word hidropesia, still preserve the original spelling ; 
so our word licorice will not yield up its meaning, 
unless we first restore it to its original spelling of 
lycorys, which we meet with in the ' Coventry 
Mysteries,' p. 22 ; and then we see that the word is 
corrupted from glycorys, i. e. glycyrhiza, from the 
Greek y\vxus, gluhus (sweet), and pi&, riza (root). 
Again, we must restore molasses to its original spell- 
ing, melasses, in order to get at its derivation from 
the Spanish word melaza (the dregs of honey), from 
the Latin word mel (honey). This article is spelt 
mehsses in the schedule to the Act of 12 Car. II. 
c. 9, where it is described as an article of export and 
import. 

To arrive at the derivation of the word clover, 
we must return to the way in which it was ori- 
ginally spelt, claver ; and then we see that the 



60 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 

name is descriptive of the plant, as cleaved or cloven 
grass. 

Pliny, in his 18th book, ch. xvi., treats of Spanish 
trefoil, or horned elavergr&sse, called in Latin medica, 
and says, " As for the grasse or hearb medica (a 
kind of claver or trefoile), the Greeks held it in old 
time for a meere straunger, as being brought into 
Greece from Media during the Persian wars, which 
King Darius levied against Greece ;" he adds, 
" Now, when this hearbe medica, or clavergrasse, 
beginneth once to flour, cut it downe, and so often 
as it floureth againe, down with it. Thus you may 
have sixe mathes in one year, or foure at least." 

Sir Richard Weston, our ambassador to the Elector 
Palatine and King of Bohemia, in 1619, has the 
merit of being the person who introduced clover 
into English agriculture. 

Our word quinine, Peruvian or Jesuits' bark, is 
the corruption of quinaquina, the name by which it 
is known in Peru, whence it was introduced into 
Europe by the Spaniards in 1640. In 1738 La 
Condamine first printed a detailed account of this 
bark, under the name of quinquina, as it was then 
called ; a name which it still retained in 1796, as we 
meet with the word in ' Robertson's America,' vol. hi. 
p. 302. The drug saffron (manufactured from the 
crocus) is chiefly imported from France and Spain, 
that from the latter country being preferred. It is 
in the Spanish language called azafron, which we 



Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 61 

have corrupted into saffron. The word was pro- 
bably introduced into Spain by the Moors, as it 
seems of Arabic origin. 

Our word lettuce, as now spelt, conveys to us no 
idea of its signification or derivation ; but written, as 
it used to be of old, leetuce, it at once gives us a clue 
to its origin from the Latin word laetuca, from lac 
(milk), and then we immediately see the ap 
propriateness of the name. Holland, in his transla- 
tion of Pliny, always spells the word leetuce. He 
says, in book xix. ch. viii., " There is another distinct 
kind of the blacke leetuce which, for the plenty that 
it yieldeth of a milky white juice, procuring drowsi- 
ness, is tearmed meconis, although all of them are 
thought to cause sleep. In old time our ancestors 
knew no other leetuce in Italy but this alone, and 
thereupon it took the name in Latin of lactuca." 
The French, in their word for this vegetable, laitue, 
have kept somewhat nearer to the original Latin 
name. 

Again, in our words linen, linseed, linsey-woolsey, 
having kept to the original spelling, we perceive at 
first sight the derivation of them from liraim, flax ; 
but although the word linnet comes from the same 
source ^the seed of the linum being the favourite 
food of that bird), yet the origin of the name does 
not at once occur to us, because we have doubled the 
letter n ; but the French, in this instance also, have, in 
their word linotte, adhered closer to the parent word. 



62 HOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 

Our verb to wither is derived by Johnson and 
Richardson from a Saxon word, ge-wyther-ed, but it 
seems to me that it is simply a corruption of winder 
(by the change of d into th), expressive of the action 
of wind on vegetation. Thus in Holland's Pliny, 
book xviii. ch. xvii., speaking of the disasters incident 
to corn, he says, " When the grain, being formed, 
before that it is firm and hard, is smitten with a 
noisome blast, it decayeth and windereth away ;" and 
again, in the 19th book, ch. iii. (speaking of a plant 
called by him laser 'pitium, which grew in wild dis- 
tricts), he says, " that it cannot abide culture ; but 
if one should go about to tend and cherish it, it 
would rather chuse to be gone into the desert, or else 
winder away and die." The transition from wilder 
to wi^er, and then to wither is simple enough. The 
passage at the 21st chapter of St. Matthew, v. 20, 
" How soon is the fig-tree withered away/' is ren- 
dered, in Tyndale's Bible, 1534, and in Cranmer's, 
1539, " How soon is the fig-tree wyddered away." 
A like change has taken place in other words ; thus 
leather was anciently written ledder, and father 
fader. 

Quinsy, inflammation of the throat, was formerly 
written squinancy, and then squincey, and then, by 
dropping the letter s, quincey, and at last we get 
quinsy, the present spelling. In Jeremy Taylor's 
work — 'Holy Living and Dying' — the word fre- 
quently occurs as originally spelt, squinancy ; thus 



Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 63 

he says, " Without revelation we cannot tell whether 
we shall eat to-morrow, or whether a squinaney shall 
choke us;" and again, speaking of Senecio Cor- 
nelius, he says, "he went away, supped merrily, 
went to bed cheerfully, and on a sudden, being sur- 
prised by a squinaney, scarce drew his breath until 
the morning, but by that time he died." Holland, in 
his translation of Pliny, book x. ch. xxxiii., uses the 
word as originally written : " The young birds of 
these martins, if they be burnt into ashes, are a sin- 
gular and sovereign remedie for the deadly squin- 
ancie." This word in fact comes from the Latin 
word synanche, a drawing together, which Latin 
word came from the Greek avvxyar, sunago (to 
collect or gather together), being the same Greek 
word from which is derived synagogue, a congrega- 
tion, or gathering together of persons. 

Richardson is of opinion that the word meyiial is 
from the same source as many, but I think this is a 
mistake, and that the original spelling of the word 
must have been moenial, though I have not met 
with the word so spelt. If I am correct in this 
supposition, the derivation of the word would seem 
to be from the Latin word moenia, the walls of a 
castle or house, and then we get an intelligible 
signification of menials, as being domestic or house- 
hold servants, living within the walls of their master's 
house, as distinguished from agricultural labourers 
or out- door servants. The term meing is used in 



64 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 

the statute 1 Richard II., c. 4, 1377, to denote the 
king's household. Again, in Acts x. 2, the passage 
rendered in our translation, " a devout man, and 
one that feared God with all his house," is in 
Wiclif's translation, 1388, "a religious man, and 
dredinge the Lord with all his meyne" The word 
menials, spelt in the Norman French meignals, 
occurs also in the statute 2 Hen. IV. c. 21, 1400; 
and in Littleton's English and Latin Dictionary, 
1684, he renders the English word meny with the 
Latin word familia, a family, and the word meny 
is marked with a star, as being of " immediate 
descent from the Latin," as explained in the preface 
to the reader. It is clear therefore that he con- 
sidered it of Latin origin. I think the French word 
for household, manage, and the Spanish word menage 
(the moveable furniture of a house) have the same 
origin. 

We do not at once see the derivation of the word 
ridings (being the three great districts into which 
Yorkshire is divided), but when we go back and 
see that the word was in Magna Charta and -in the 
statute of 21 Hen. III., c. 10, 1260, formerly spelt 
trithing, we see at a glance the derivation from the 
Latin tres, three, and that trithing became corrupted 
into triding, and Priding into riding. 

The origin of our word farthing is similai. In 
the statute 9 Hen. V., stat. 2, c. 7, 1421, it is 
enacted "that the king do to be ordained good 



Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 65 

and just weight of the noble, half-noble, and far- 
thing of gold" showing that the coin then known as 
the farthing was the fourth thing, or fourth part of 
the noble ; so our farthing is the fourth part of a 
penny. In the same way the quadrans, with the 
Romans, was the fourth part of an as. Before the 
reign of Edward I. the penny was the smallest coin, 
and was marked or indented with a cross, by the 
guidance of which it might be cut into halves for 
halfpennies, or into quarters for farthings ; but to 
avoid the frauds occasioned by unequal cutting, 
Edward I. caused halfpence and farthings to be 
coined in round distinct pieces. Instances of pennies 
neatly and accurately cut into halves and quarters 
occur almost wherever Saxon coins have been dis- 
covered. The Saxon word penny first occurs in 
the laws of Ina, king of the West Saxons, whose 
reign commenced in 688. It was equal in weight 
to three pence with us, and four of these made a 
Saxon settling, from whence comes our word shil- 
ling ; the Saxon word settling being derived from 
schild, a shield, because this coin was anciently 
stamped with the representation of a shield. Edward 
I. reduced the weight of the penny to a standard, 
ordering that it should weigh 32 grains of wheat 
taken out of the middle of the ear. Twenty of 
these pence were to weigh an ounce, and thus 
the penny became a weight as well as a coin, and 
was afterwards known only as a weight until subse- 



66 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 

quently re-introduced into the British coinage. The 
pennyweight seems afterwards to have been reduced 
to 24 grains, each grain weighing a grain of wheat 
gathered out of the middle of the ear, and well 
dried ; and it is supposed that when the reduction 
took place the improvement in agriculture had ren- 
dered 24 grains of wheat equivalent to 32 grains 
of the more early harvests. 

In the Saxon times no silver coin bigger than a 
penny was struck in England, nor after the Con- 
quest till the reign of Edward III., who about the 
year 1361 coined grosses, or great pieces, which 
went for fourpence each, and were so called from 
the French word gros, great, and which name we 
subsequently corrupted into groat. From the same 
word w r e get our word grogran, meaning a stuff 
woven with large woof and a rough pile — the word 
literally signifying large-grained or coarsely woven. 
Admiral Vernon, who in 1739 was appointed com- 
mander-in-chief on the West Indian station, was 
in the habit of walking the deck in bad weather 
wrapped in a rough grogran coat, and thus acquired 
with the sailors the name of Old Grog. He intro- 
duced the use of rum and water by the ship's com- 
pany, which speedily became very popular, and 
from the admiral's nickname acquired the name of 
grog. 

Burly was anciently written boorley, and then 
there was a clue to its origin from boor; thus a 



Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 67 

burly man is a boorlike man. Sir Thomas More 
says, " how be it in his latter dayes, with over liberall 
dyet. somewhat corpulent and booreley" So neigh- 
bour was anciently neizbore, i. e. one boor nigh an- 
other. In the passage Romans xiii. 9, " Thou shalt 
love thy neighbour as thyself," in Wiclifs Bible, 
1380, we find "Thou schalt love thy neizbore as 
the silf." In like manner nigh at hand was for- 
merly neyhand — we meet with the word in the 
4 Coventry Mysteries,' p. 172. In the way in which 
we now spell the word butcher we lose sight of its 
origin, but if we restore it to its ancient spelling, 
bocher, we see that we have adopted the word from 
the French boucher. Stowe, vol. ii. p. 445, giving 
the ancient assize of the butcher, says, " A bocher 
that selleth swyne's flesh that is anywise mesell, 
corrupt, or in the morayne, or if he by flesh of 
Jewes, and sell it unto Chrystus men, and thereof 
the same bocher be convicte, first he shall grievously 
be amercyed," &c. The passage at 1 Cor. x. 25, 
" Whatsoever is sold in the shambles that eat," is 
in Wiclifs Bible, " Al thing that is seeld in the 
bocheri ete ye." In like manner the word currier, 
as now spelt, conveys to us no clue as to its ety- 
mology, but restore it to its ancient spelling, coryour 
or coriour, and we see at once its derivation from 
the Latin corium, a skin. Stowe, vol. ii. p. 446, 
says, " Also the assize of a coryour is that he cory 
no maner of ledder, but if it be thurgh tanned, and 



68 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 

that it be thurgh coried with suffiseant stuff." The 
passage translated in our version of Acts x. 6, " he 
lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by 
the sea side," is in Wiclifs Bible, " this is herboride 
at a man symount couriour, whos hous is biside 
the sea." 

The spelling and pronunciation of our word 
squirrel discloses to us nothing of the meaning of 
the name, but if we trace it back to the Latin 
sciurus, of which our word is a bad corruption, we 
at once get a clue to its meaning, and see that it is 
derived from the Greek words am*, skia, shade, 
and ov^oc, oura, a tail ; and thus we discover that 
the meaning of our word squirrel is shady-tail, and 
that this little creature, so familiar to us, derives its 
name from the fact of its tail serving it as an 
umbrella, for protection against heat and cold. 
Linnaeus, however, tells us that it makes a further 
use of this appendage, for he says that when a 
squirrel crosses a river, a piece of bark is its boat, 
and its tail the sail. 

When furmety was spelt frumente its derivation 
was seen at a glance, from the Latin frumentum, 
corn. Holland, in his translation of Pliny, book xviii. 
ch. vii., after reprobating the custom of working and 
kneading dough with sea- water to save the charge 
of salt, says, "In France and Spaine, when the 
brewers have steeped their wheat or frument in 
water and masht it for their drinke of divers sorts." 



Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 69 

So again when furnace was written fornace, its 
derivation from the Latin fornax, a chimney or 
oven, was apparent. 

The word which we use to denote the juice of the 
apple when expressed and fermented, and which we 
now spell eider, gives us, when so spelt, no clue 
whatever to its derivation. The word formerly had 
a more extended meaning than at present, and sig- 
nified any strong drink other than wine, and was 
written sieer. The passage at 1 St. Luke, v. 15, 
translated in our Bibles " and shall drink neither 
wine nor strong drink," is in the Rheims Bible, 1582, 
" and wine and sicer he shall not drink." In the 
statute (12 Chas. II. c. 9) the word is spelt sider ; 
the ancient spelling leads us to discover that the 
word came from the Greek word aixsqa., sikera, 
translated into Latin sicera, and by us turned first 
into sicer, then sider, now cider. The word seems 
to be of Hebrew origin, for St. Jerome, who went to 
Jerusalem about the year 369 to study the Hebrew 
language, in order to acquire a more perfect know- 
ledge of the Holy Scriptures, in his letter to Nepo- 
tianus (a son of a sister of the Emperor Constantine) 
concerning the lives of the clergy, informs us that 
in Hebrew any inebriating liquor is called sicera, 
whether made of corn, the juice of apples, honey, 
dates, or any other fruit. 

Mr. Southey, in his ' Omniana,' or * Horse Otio- 
siores,' vol. i. p. 283, suggests that the old Leonese 



70 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 

word merino is a mongrel derivative from the Arabic 
or Moorish title Emir, likely enough to have been 
formed when the two languages were, as it were, 
running into each other. In vol. ii. p. 105, he says 
that Merino is the old Leonese title still preserved 
in Portugal, though long since obsolete in the other 
kingdoms of Spain. He says that the old laws of 
Spain define it thus : " He is a man who has autho- 
rity to administer justice within a certain district." 
The first mention of this office is in the reign of 
Bermudo II. (982). The Merinos then commanded 
the troops of their respective provinces in war, but 
before the time of Enrique II. (1369) it was become 
wholly a civil office. Mr. Southey adds that most 
probably the judge of the shepherds was called the 
merino, and hence the appellation extended to the 
flocks under his care. I think there can be no 
doubt but that Mr. Southey's suggestion is the true 
one, for in Connelly's Spanish Dictionary, published 
at Madrid, 1798, the word merino is rendered into 
English, first as " the chief judge of a sheep-walk, 
invested with an ample power," and then as "he 
who superintends the sheep and pastures :" the 
term afterwards became transferred to the sheep 
themselves, and since the introduction of the sheep 
into England by George III. (1788) the word has 
been of common use with us, and was applied to 
designate the wool of the Spanish sheep, in the spin- 
ning of which the French, until recently, far ex- 



Chap. IV. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 71 

celled our manufacturers; but in 1833, Captain 
Charles Stuart Cochrane, of the Royal Navy, esta- 
blished in Glasgow a manufacture for spinning 
merino yarn on the French principle, and the term 
merinos has for some years been applied to the soft 
and beautiful fabrics made from this yarn. Thus 
has this word been degraded from the title of a 
military commander to denote the office of a civil 
magistrate, then a kind of master-shepherd, after- 
wards the sheep themselves, and finally the articles 
manufactured from the wool. 

Again, the word shot was formerly much used as 
synonymous with reckoning, and is still so used by 
the lower orders. Shakspeare so used this word 
when he said, "A man is never welcome to a place 
till some certain shot be paid and the hostess says 
welcome." The word, when so spelt, leads us on a 
wrong scent after its origin, since our ideas naturally 
turn to the verb " to shoot," with which it has nothing 
to do. The word is a corruption or mis-spelling of 
scot, which we retain in our words scot and lot, the 
payment of which in many boroughs, before the 
passing of the Reform Act, constituted the qualifica- 
tion of the voters, and which word we also retain 
in our expression scot free. The meetings formerly 
held in England for drinking ale, the expense of 
which was paid by contribution, were called scotales. 
The tenants of the Archbishop of Canterbury at 
South Mailing, in Sussex, were bound by the custom 



72 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. IV. 

of the manor to entertain the lord or his bailiff 
with a drinking, and the rule of contribution to- 
wards the expenses was, that a man should pay 
threepence halfpenny for himself and his wife, and 
a widow and a cottager a penny halfpenny. The 
French have a similar word, Scot, to denote the 
quota of a tavern bill. Again, the Peter Pence, 
formerly collected in this country and remitted to 
Rome was called Homescot, and the rate collected 
to defray the charge of candles in churches was 
called waxshot or waxscot. 

When we find camomile spelt without an h, as it 
commonly is, its origin is concealed, but restore the 
original spelling of chamomile, and we readily see 
its origin, from the Greek %u[aoc,i, chamai, " of the 
ground," and /xtjXov, melon, "an apple." Pliny 
(book xxi ) gives us the different names by which this 
plant was known, and says, " others again name it 
chamoemelon, for the scent or savour that it hath 
of an apple." Again, the word soder, to join to- 
gether, when so spelt, does not disclose its etymo- 
logy, but restored to its ancient spelling so/der, and 
we see its derivation from the Latin word solido, to 
make firm. 



Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 73 



CHAPTEE V. 

Of the Interchange of Letters in Languages. 

Letters which are called labial and mute, being 
those that are chiefly pronounced by means of the 
lips, and which are incapable of pronunciation with- 
out the aid of a vowel, such as b, p, v, and c, have 
a constant tendency in the articulation of different 
languages to become confounded with one another, 
and even in the same language are often inter- 
changed one with another. Thus the old Greek 
word fioiaikzvs, basileus (a king), is by the modern 
Greeks pronounced " t'asileus," whereas the ancient 
Greeks wrote the Roman name Fzrgilius as if it 
had been spelt " J^Vgilius." 

The same change of letter occurs in Spain, which 
led Scaliger to affirm satirically, that in Gascony 
bibere (to drink) was the same as vivere (to live), — 
a statement which was quite true, so far as the pro- 
nunciation of the word was concerned. We have a 
familiar instance of the tendency of the letters b and 
v to interchange, in the name of the city of Sebas- 
topol, i. e. <js£a.<TTos, sebastos (august), and ttq\is, 
polls (a city), which we frequently see written " Se- 
vastopol," and which is so spelt at the exhibition of 
Mr. Wyld's model in Leicester-square. Another 

E 



74 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 

instance occurs in the Latin word habere (to have), 
which in the Italian is changed into avere. Again, 
in the Latin word caballus (a pack-horse), but which 
in aftertimes was used to signify a war-horse, by 
the change of the letter b into v, we get the cor- 
rupted word " cavallus," the origin of our word 
cavalry and cavalier, and of the French words, 
chevalier and cheval. From the same source we 
get our word chivalry, frequently used by our old 
poets to signify cavalry, thus Milton, in • Paradise 
Lost,' book i., line 37, says, — 

" Whose waves o'erthrew 
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry." 

And again, at line 765, — 

" Defy'd the best of Painim chivalry 
To mortal combat or career with lance." 

And again, in ' Paradise Regained/ book iii., line 
344,— 

" Such and so numerous was their chivalry." 

In the Roman army a day's journey was about 
twenty miles, and the army never passed a night 
without pitching a camp, and fortifying it with a ditch 
and rampart. The camp, if used only for a night, or 
two or three nights, was called mansio, from maneo 
(to remain), and hence comes our word mansion, a 
house where a family usually remains or resides. 

The rampart before referred to, was composed of 
the earth dug from the ditch, with sharp stakes 






Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 75 

fixed into it, and was called vallum, from vallus (a 
stake) ; and the space between the stakes was called 
inter vallum, and from first signifying this small 
space, the word was afterwards used to denominate 
any space, either of place or time, and hence we get 
our word interval. By the change of the letter v 
into b, the word vallum became corrupted into bal- 
lum, or ballium. In the preface to Grose's ' An- 
tiquities of England and Wales,' describing the 
different parts of our ancient castles, he says, " the 
work next in order was the ditch, &c. : the ditch 
was sometimes called the ditch delBayle, or of the 
Ballium; within the ditch were the walls of the 
Ballium, or outworks. In towns, the appellation 
was given to a work fenced with palisades, and 
sometimes masonry covering the suburbs, but in 
castles, was the space immediately within the outer 
walls. When there was a double enceinte of walls, 
the areas next each wall were styled the outer and 
inner ballia." Matthew of Westminster, a Bene- 
dictine monk, who wrote a history from the begin- 
ning of the world to the end of Edward L, and 
who died in 1380, whilst narrating the siege of 
Rochester by the Earl of Leicester, in 1265, says, 
" He occupied the city with the outward ballium, of 
the castle." In the Paris edition of ' Froissart's 
Chronicles,' published in 1514, in ch. lix., describ- 
ing the taking of St. Am and during the siege of 
Tournay by the Earl of Hainault, he says, " he won 

e 2 



76 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 

at his first coming the bailies, ' conquiret de pre- 
miere venue ses bailies."' Colonel Jones, in the 
edition of ' Froissart's Chronicles,' which he pub- 
lished at Hafod, does not seem to have known 
what these bailies were, for he translates the pas- 
sage, " that the barriers were instantly won." 
In Morant's ' History of Essex,' vol. i., p. 8, 
speaking of Colchester Castle, he says, " The castle- 
yard, bailey, and baylywiek, was formerly encom- 
passed on the south and west sides, by a strong 
wall," and these words seem to be the translation of 
the Court Rolls in 37 Hen. VI. He also enume- 
rates the lands out of which tithes were payable to 
the chapel in the castle, and amongst these lands 
we find " the Castell Baylie with the gardens ad- 
joining next the street." Drake, in his ' History 
of the City of York,' p. 286, says, " that there was 
a castle in York, long before the Conqueror's time, 
I have proved elsewhere, which I take to have been 
in the place already described, called Old Bayle. 
Had he known the origin of this word, he might 
have spoken with greater confidence as to the locality 
of the old castle. The church of St. Peter, in the 
Bailey, at Oxford, is so called in consequence of its 
standing in the area which had formed the outer 
ballium of Oxford Castle ; and so the Old Bailey, in 
London, receives its name in reference to its posi- 
tion with regard to the ancient walls of the City. 
Johnson, in his ' Dictionary,' says that the word 



Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE . 77 

Bailiff is of doubtful etymology ; but it seems to me 
that this word is derived from the same source, and 
probably originally signified the officer in charge of 
a castle. 

In the foregoing cases the tendency to the change 
of the letters b and v is illustrated, and I will now 
give a few instances of the interchange of the letters 
b and^>. 

The Macedonian Greeks wrote the name <&i\i7i7ros, 
Philippus, as if it had been spelt Bilippus. 

The Latin word for a whale, balcena, is merely a 
corruption of the Greek word for the same fish, 
<pa\xiv* 9 phalaina. The Turkish Pasha or Pacha 
is by us transformed into Bashaw, and our word 
potatoe is with the Spaniards batata; whilst our 
word apricot is with the French abricot. 

We have another instance of the change of p into 
b in our word " bishop," derived from the Greek 
z7rirsyt.o7ros 9 episcopus, signifying an overseer or in- 
spector. The word episcopus first became corrupted 
into piscop by cutting off the letter e ; and the ter- 
mination, then piscop, changed to biscop and bishop. 
Though the word is now universally used to signify 
an ecclesiastical overseer, the word from which it is 
derived was originally used to denote a temporal 
governor. Thus, Homer applies the word to 
Hector, because he had the chief command of the 
city of Troy ; and Cicero applies the term to him- 
self, as having charge of the coasts of Campania, 



78 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 

and the Athenians gave the title to those whom they 
sent as governors into their provinces. 

From the Latin word bursa, derived from the 
Greek $vqgx, bursa (an ox-hide), came the word 
bursarius, used by the writers of the middle ages 
to denote a treasurer, from whence the officers 
of colleges in England called bursers derive their 
name. From the same origin comes the word 
bourse, an exchange where merchants meet to ne- 
gotiate money transactions. In 1531, Sir Richard 
Gresham, the King's merchant, and who was Sheriff 
of London, wrote to Sir Thomas Audley, Lord 
Privy Seal, requesting him to move the King 
(Henry VIII.) to direct a letter to be sent to Sir 
George Monaux, requiring him to sell certain 
houses in Lombard Street to the Mayor and com- 
monalty, for the purpose of erecting a burse on the 
ground of the same for the use of the merchants. 
Three years afterwards the king sent letters to the 
city, directing the building of a burse at Leaden- 
hall; but the Court of Common Council, having 
voted that the place of meeting should not be 
removed from Lombard Street, nothing further was 
then accomplished. However, Sir Thomas Gre- 
sham (son of Sir Richard) persevered in his father's 
design, and in 1564 proposed to the corporation to 
erect a suitable building for the merchants, if the 
corporation would provide the ground. This was 
accordingly done ; and before the end of the year 



Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 79 

1567, a structure, in general similar to the Ex- 
change at Antwerp, was covered in. Stowe tells 
us, that on the 23rd January, 1570-71 : " Queen 
Elizabeth, attended with her nobilitie, came from 
her house at the Strand, called Somerset House, 
and entered the City, by Temple Bar, through 
Fleete Street, Cheape, and so by the north side of 
the Burse, to Sir Thomas Gresham's, in Bishop's- 
gate Streete, where she dined ; after dinner, Her 
Majestie, returning through Cornhill, entered the 
Burse on the south side ; and after that she had 
viewed every part thereof above ground, especially 
the Pawne, which was richly furnished with all 
sortes of the finest wares in the City, she caused the 
same Burse by an herald and a trompet to be pro- 
claimed the Royall Exchange, and so to be called 
from thenceforth, and not otherwise." The resort 
of merchants, however, is still called the Bourse in 
most continental towns. 

Littleton, in his ' Latin Dictionary,' published in 
1677, says, "that the first building of this sort, to 
which the name of burse was given, was at Bruges, 
in Flanders, which city, whilst under the dominion 
of the Dukes of Burgundy, was the principal em- 
porium of the commerce of Europe." The first 
building, however, which seems to have borne the 
name, was the Citadel at Carthage, said to have 
been erected by Dido, who, on coming to Africa, 
agreed with the inhabitants for the purchase of as 



80 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 

much land as could be encompassed by a bull's 
hide ; and, having concluded the agreement, she is 
said to have cut the hide in small thongs, and 
therewith to have enclosed a considerable territory 
on which she built a citadel, which she called 
Bursa, from the Greek word above referred to, sig- 
nifying an ox-hide. From this word we get our 
words disburse, re-emburse, &c, and by the change 
of b into p we get purse, and purser, the officer who 
on board ship performs the same duties as a burser 
at a college. 

In our word Haven we have an instance of the 
change of the letter v into /, and back again from 
/ into v. This bird is in the Danish language 
called Rami, from whence, by the change of u into 
/, the Saxons produced their word Reafan, the 
name of the famous magical Standard of the Danes. 
Hume, in his ' History of England/ chap. ii. p. 81, 
speaking of Alfred, says : " He made a sudden 
sally on the Danes before sunrising, and taking 
them unprepared, he put them to rout, pursued 
them with great slaughter, killed Hubba himself, 
and got possession of the famous Reafen, or en- 
chanted Standard, in which the Danes put great 
confidence. It contained the figure of a Raven, 
which had been inwoven by the three sisters of 
Hinguar and Hubba, with many magical incanta- 
tions, and which by its different movements prog- 
nosticated, as the Danes believed, the good or bad 






Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 81 

success of any enterprise." We learn from Sir 
John Spelman's ' Life of Alfred,' p. 61, what these 
movements were, for he there says : " It is pre- 
tended that being carried in battle, towards good 
success it would always seem to clap its wings, and 
make as if it would fly ; but towards the approach 
of mischief it would hang down and not move." 
By changing the / in this Reafan back into v we 
get our word Haven, and its derivative ravenous. 
The Germans call the raven Der Habe, changing the 
v into b. 

Our word fascinate is an instance of a double 
change, first from p to b, and then from b to /. 
This word springs from the Greek fiuaxoiivaj, bas- 
kaino (to bewitch), a corruption of (Qoug-hxwco, phais- 
kaino, from (pocos, phaos (the eye), and x.aivu f kaino 
(to kill) ; * thus, fascinate means to kill with the eye, 
and is appropriately used with reference to the feline 
tribe, and serpents, who bewitch their victims by the 
power of the eye. We might adduce many words 
to show that the letters v and / are interchangeable, 
but a few will suffice. The word Vetch, from the 
Latin word vicia, was in olden time written fitch, 
instances of which spelling occur at Isaiah xxviii. 
25 and 27 : " When he hath made plain the face 
thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches? for 
the fitches are not threshed with a threshing in- 

* See Parkhurst's Lexicon by Rose, and the authorities 
there quoted. 

E 3 



82 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 

strument, &c, but the fitches are beaten out with a 
staff." 

And so, again, our word fan comes from the 
Latin vannus, from whence also comes fane (a wea- 
thercock). Fane (a temple or church), however, we 
get from the Latin word fanum, and profane is 
from pro, for proeul (far from), and fanum (the 
church). So, again, vixen was anciently fixen, and 
previously foxen. 

In many French words, derived from the Latin, 
the letter p is changed to v. Thus, from the before 
mentioned Latin word episcopus, the French, by such 
a change of letter, derive their word for a bishop, 
eveque. Numerous instances of a similar change of 
these letters in French words derived from Latin 
might be adduced, but we will content ourselves 
with two more examples. 

The Latin word pauper is adopted by us without 
change, but in the French language it becomes 
pauvre. Again, the Latin name for the fourth 
month, Aprilis, becomes April with us, but with the 
French, Avril. 

It does not strike us at first sight that this word 
April and our word overture have the same origin, 
and originally had the same meaning. The name 
Aprilis was given by the Romans to the month from 
their word aperire (to open), because in that month 
the buds and vegetation began to open. So over- 
ture, which now signifies something offered for con- 



Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 83 

sideration, originally signified a hole or opening. 
In Holland's Pliny, book viii. ch. xxxviii., speaking of 
the squirrels, we find it stated: "The squirrels also 
foresee a tempest coming, and where the wind will 
blow ; for look in what corner the wind is like to 
stand, on that side they stop up the mouth of their 
holes, and make an overture on the other side 
against it ;" and again, in book xvi. ch. xii., treat- 
ing of the method of obtaining rosin from trees, he 
says, " but the nearer the overture, or hole, is made 
to the earth, the better is the rosin that issue th forth." 
To make an overture, then, was to make an opening ; 
and thus one who commences a negotiation, makes 
an opening to the discussion, and so is said to make 
overtures. In like manner the overture to a concert 
is the music played at the opening of the entertain- 
ment. Now, as to the immediate derivation of the 
word, we get it from the French ouverture (an open- 
ing), and they from the Latin aperire (to open), by 
the change of the letter p into v. In its original 
signification the word was equivalent to our word 
aperture, which we get direct from the same Latin 
word aperire, to open, without a change of letter. 

We find the letter c in the Latin language chang- 
ing into g in the French ; thus from the Latin word 
eithara (a harp), derived by them from the Greek 
x*9aga, hithara, the French get their word guitare, 
from which we get our word guitar. 

Again, from the Latin word macer (thin or poor 



84 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 

in flesh) the French obtain their word maigre, from 
whence comes our word meager; but our word 
macerate (to make lean) comes to us direct from the 
same Latin word, without the change of letter, and 
so also our word emaciate. 

Again, from the Latin word acer (sharp), the 
French, by a similar change of letter, obtain their 
word aigre, from which we take our word eager, 
which, although now signifying ardent or vehement, 
formerly signified sharp or sour, in which sense it is 
frequently used by Shakspeare. Thus in the colloquy 
between Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus, ' Hamlet,' 
Act i. scene 4, 

Hamlet (says) " The air bites shrewdly — Is it very cold ? 
Horatio. It is a nipping and an eager air." 

Again, in the Third Part of Henry VI., Act ii. 
scene 6, we find the Duke of York's son, George, 
saying — 

" If so thou thinks't, vex him with 
Eager words." 

Again, Shakspeare, in his 108th sonnet, says — 

" Like as to make our appetites more keen 
With eager compounds we our palates urge." 

Dr. Cole concludes his second letter to Bishop 
Jewel, dated 24th March, 1560, with these words ; 
" And so I trust you see cause to forgive me, if in 
any part of my writing I seem over eager." We 
still retain the original meaning of this word in our 



Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 85 

word vinegar, derived from the French vinaigre, 
which the French obtain from the Latin words vinum 
(wine) and acer (sharp). Our words acrid and 
acerbity we derive direct from the Latin word acer, 
and in these words no change of the letter c into g 
takes place. 

Again, we find the letter c in the Latin language 
turning into s in the French. Thus, from the Latin 
placer e (to delight) the French get plaisir, and we 
get pleasure. From licere (to be free), the French 
get loisir, and we, leisure ; and from the Latin word 
placare (to subdue), the French get appaiser, from 
whence we get appease, whereas we derive our words 
placid, licence, and placable, direct from the same 
three Latin words, and no change of the letter c into 
s takes place. 

From the Latin word spuma (froth), we obtain 
two words, the one spume, direct from it, without any 
change ; the other scum, indirectly through the 
French, who obtain their word ecume from the same 
original. 

The letter y, g, in the Greek language changes 
frequently into k in our language ; thus our word 
know is derived from the Greek word ywu oku, ginosco, 
which comes from the obsolete Greek word yvoo/, 
gnow ; so again our word knee is derived from the 
Greek word yovy, gonu, from whence the Latin word 
genu comes, signifying the same part of the body ; 
and from whence we get our word genuflection, and 



86 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 

all these words have their origin in an Hebrew word 
signifying to bend down. The letter y, g, in the 
Greek language sometimes changes into c in our 
language, and also in the French. Thus, from the 
Greek word ycovia, gonia, derived from the same 
original as the words just mentioned, we get our 
word corner, signifying that part of a building or 
other article which is bent ; also our word coigne and 
the French word coin, signifying a corner : but in 
describing a building having many angles or corners, 
we retain the Greek spelling and pronunciation thus, 
a pentagon, a hexagon, &c. The reverse change of 
the letter c into g takes place in the Italian word 
gaggia (a gaol), derived from the Latin cavea (a 
cage for wild beasts), from whence the French get 
geole, and we gaol or jail. Among the Romans the 
cavece were iron cages, wherein wild beasts were kept 
ready to be let out for sport in the amphitheatre ; 
but in England we adopted these cages for the con- 
finement of prisoners, and we read in Stowe that in 
the year 1401 the authorities in London caused a 
strong timber prison to be erected for disorderly 
persons, which was called the cage, which, being 
totally decayed in 1614, was pulled down, and a 
new one erected on an improved plan, having a room 
for a sick person. We also find that Sir William 
Capell, Lord Mayor of London in the year 1503, 
caused cages to be set up in every ward of the city 
for the punishment of vagabonds, and in the poems 



Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 87 

of Taylor, the Water Poet, who was born in 1580, 
and died in 1654, we find the following passage : — 

" In London, and within a mile I ween, 
There are of jails and prisons full eighteen, 
And sixty whipping posts, and stocks, and cages." 

We find the vowels e and u interchanging in 
different languages; thus, from the Greek word 
sX*or, elkos, from sXxm, elko (to draw), the Latins 
get their word ulcus, from which we get our word 
ulcer ; so from the Latin word ulmus we get the 
word elm. 

Again, we find the vowel i changing into e ; thus 
from the Latin piper we get pepper ; from the Latin 
tinea, tench, and from pica, pecker ; and again we 
find the vowel e changing into a; and from the 
Latin Berberis we get Barhary : from the Greek 
/jwjX« v>I > mechane, the Latins had machina, and we 
machine ; and from the Latin perdix we get part- 
ridge. 

It is not at first sight very apparent that our word 
cookery is derived from the Greek tt&titw, pepto (to 
boil). From this word we first get ttsttcov, pepon 
(boiled). The Greek letter p frequently changes 
into g in the Latin, as instanced in the Latin words 
equus (a horse), derived from the Greek ittkos, ippos 
and linquo (to leave), from the Greek Xeittco, leipo ; 
and in the Latin language the letter q interchanges 
with c, as in the instances quum {when), and quur 
(why), which change into cum and cur. By the 



88 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 

union of these changes the Greek word pepto in the 
Latin becomes coquo, from which we get our word 
cookery. The word dyspepsia (difficulty of digestion) 
does not come to us through the Latin language, but 
direct from the Greek, and there is no change of 
letter. Dyspepsia literally signifies the act of cook- 
ing with difficulty, from the Greek ^us, dus (with 
difficulty), and ttsttto, pepto (to cook). When Italian 
or French words are derived from the Latin, the 
letter c disappears before t, as dictus (said), becomes 
ditto in the Italian, and dit in the French ; so eoetus 
(cooked) becomes in the Italian cotto (whence terra 
eotta, baked earth), and in French, cuit. From 
this French word cuit, and the Latin word bis 
(twice), we have manufactured the word biscuit, sig- 
nifying twice baked. In the first making of biscuits 
it was probably necessary to bake them twice, to 
deprive them completely of moisture ; but though 
this process has been discontinued, and the object 
obtained by other means, the name has been con- 
tinued. It is also used at the potteries to denote 
porcelain destined to receive a vitreous coating, and 
which therefore requires to be twice subjected to the 
action of heat. The glaze used to form this vitreous 
coating is a liquid ; and if it were put on before the 
vessel were set by semi-baking, the clay would ab- 
sorb the water from the glaze, and the form of the 
vessel would be altered. One baking, therefore, is 
necessary to fix the shape of the vessel, and the 



Chap. V. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 89 

second to vitrify the glaze. The term biscuit is, 
however, applied to signify the article after the first 
baking, and before the glaze is applied, and is not 
therefore a well-selected term. 

From the same Latin word coquo (to cook, digest, 
or ripen), and the prefix prce (before or early), the 
Romans obtained the name precoqua, given by them 
to the fruit which we, by adding another prsefix, a, 
call apricot, signifying a fruit which ripens early. 
The old English name of this fruit was a precoJce, 
which afterwards became apricoek, and then apricot. 

Pliny, in his ' Natural History,' book xv. ch. xii., 
speaking of the peach, says, " This fruit ordinarily 
waxeth ripe after the fall of the leafe, or autumn, 
but abricots are ready to be eaten in summer." 

The same word prcecoqua is the parent of our 
word precocious (ripe before the time). From the 
same word coquo (to cook) we also get our words 
to decoct, decoction, and concoct, and also the name 
of that useful servant, the cooJc. We may finish this 
article on cookery and this chapter by mentioning 
the fate of one Richard Roose, of Rochester, cook, 
concerning whom we find an act of Parliament, in 
the 22nd year of the reign of Henry VIII. , 1531, 
ordering him and all other persons guilty of poison- 
ing to be boiled to death ; this Richard Roose 
having poisoned some porridge in the Bishop of 
Rochester's kitchen, whereby seventeen persons were 
poisoned, two of whom died ; this sentence was car- 



90 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. V. 

ried into execution in Smithfield, as we learn from 
Rapin (vol. i. p. 792). Lord Coke, in his third 
' Institute,' says, that eleven years afterwards, Mar- 
garet Davy, a young woman, was attainted of high 
treason for poisoning her mistress, and was,, with 
some others, boiled to death in Smithfield, on the 
17th of March, 1542. He adds, that the Act of 
Parliament was too severe to last long, and there- 
fore was repealed by the statutes of 1 Edward VI. 
ch. 12, and 1 Mary, ch. 1. This statute probably 
gave rise to the proverb " getting oneself into hot 
water," as suggested by a writer in i Notes and 
Queries/ 



Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 91 



CHAPTEE VI. 

Of the Interchange of Letters rx Languages — 
continued. 

Words commencing with h will generally be found 
to be of Greek origin, this letter being used nei- 
ther by the Romans nor the French, excepting in a 
few terms of art and proper names, derived from 
other languages. The letter Jc is interchangeable 
with c, and thus many of our words commencing 
with the letter e will also be found to be traceable 
to the Greek language. Thus, kennel is the cor- 
ruption of the French chenil, the French word being 
the corruption of the Italian canile, from the Latin 
cams (a dog), formed from the Greek xvcov, kuon, 
genitive xvvo?, hunos (of a dog). We should hardly 
imagine that the name of the Canary bird is trace- 
able to the same origin, but such is the case. The 
bird immediately derives its name from the Canary 
Islands, which are the most frequented haunts of 
the species ; and we learn from Pliny, following the 
description of Juba, the Mauritanian Prince, that 
one of these islands was called Canaria, from the 
number of dogs of a large size which were found 
there. A dance common in these islands was in- 
troduced into this country, under the name of the 
" Canary dance," to which Shakspeare alludes in 



92 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 

' Love's Labour Lost,' Act iii. sc. 1, in the following 
passage : — 

" Moth. — Master, will you. win 
Your love with a French brawl ? 

" Armado. — How meanest thou, brawling in French ? 

" Moth. — No, my complete Master ; but to gig off a tune 
at the tongue's end, ' canary ' to it with your feet, humour 
it with turning up your eyelids." 

So, also, the wine made in these islands was called 
Canary, to which Shakspeare also alludes — 

" I will to my honest knight Falstaff, 
And drink canary with him." 

In like manner, kindle, the corruption of candle, is 
from the Latin word candeo (to burn), derived from 
the Greek xouco, kaio (to burn). So canal and 
channel (anciently amongst us written kennelT), 
coming direct to us from the Latin canalis (a 
gutter), are derived from the Greek %a.vco, chano (to 
gape), which is also the origin of our word chaos. 
Again, carriage is, I think, incorrectly derived by 
our etymologists from car, and that from a Saxon 
word cyranto, turn. It seems to me to come from 
the Latin carruca (a chariot), the origin of which 
is clearly the Greek word napouxiov, carouchion (a 
coach). 

Stowe tells us, " that coaches were not known in 
this island of old time, but chariots, or whirlicotes, 
then so called, and then only used of Princes, or men 
of great estates, such as had their footmen about 



Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 93 

them. And for example to note, I read that Ri- 
chard II., being threatened by the rebels of Kent, 
rode from the Tower of London to the Mile's End, 
and with him his mother (because she was sick and 
weak) in a whirlicote, divers Lords attending on 
horseback. But in the year next following, the 
said Richard, who took to wife Anne, daughter to 
the King of Bohemia, that first brought hither the 
riding upon side saddles ; and so was the riding 
in those whirlicotes and chariots forsaken, except at 
coronations, and such like spectacles ; but now, of 
late years, the use of coaches, brought out of Ger- 
many, is taken up and made so common, as there is 
neither distinction of time, nor difference of persons 
observed ; for the world runs on wheels, with many 
whose parents were glad to go on foot." He adds 
that " the number of coaches in London must needs 
be dangerous," and that, "although there were good 
laws and customs in the City for their government, 
such as, that the forehorse of every carriage should 
be led by the hand, &c, yet these good orders are 
not observed." Coaches seem to have been in- 
troduced into England about the year 1570, but 
were used only by a few distinguished individuals. 
Hume, in his ' History of England,' says, " About 
1580 the use of coaches was introduced by the Earl 
of Arundel ; before that time the Queen, on public 
occasions, rode behind her Chamberlain." In 1625, 
however, they were let for hire ; and in 1689 a 



94 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 

Company of Coachmakers was incorporated in Lon- 
don, and bore for their arms a coach, which is so 
similar to the family-coach of the present day, as to 
convince us that little change in the form has taken 
place since that time. But though coaches, that 
is, covered vehicles for travelling, are but of com- 
paratively modern use in England, wheeled car- 
riages are of very great antiquity. About 1500 
years before the Christian era they were in common 
use among the Egyptians ; and carriages were also 
well known to the Greeks and Romans, and seem to 
have been used not only for purposes of war, but 
also for domestic purposes. Homer describes the 
chariot of Juno, with wheels having eight brazen 
spokes and tires of brass, and the seat fastened 
with cords of gold and silver. And again, in the 
24th book of the Iliad, line 266, when describing 
Priam's visit to the Grecian camp to ransom the 
body of Hector, he says that he had k<z\yiv tt%ojto- 
Trxya. a,[Aoi%ait, which is well translated in a treatise 
on ' Draught,' published by the Society for the Dif- 
fusion of Useful Knowledge, by the words " a beau- 
tiful, new-built travelling carriage." 

The Greek word yXiiaqc, clima, from ytkivoo (to 
incline or decline), technically signified spaces upon 
the surface of the globe, measured from the equator 
to the polar circles, in each of which spaces the 
longest day is half an hour longer than in that 
nearer to the equator — these spaces were called kkt~ 



Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 95 

(axtoi, climata, because in numbering them they de- 
clined from the equator, and inclined towards the 
pole. From this technical signification the word 
clima was by the Romans applied to denote parts of 
country, without regard to the length of the days ; 
and from clima we get our word climate, which with 
us has lost both its technical and subsequent mean- 
ing, and now popularly denotes the temperature of 
the atmosphere in regard to heat and moisture in 
any district or country. From the same Greek word 
the Romans obtained their word climax (a ladder, or 
ascending by degrees), and hence we have obtained 
our word climax, a figure in rhetoric, by which the 
sentence rises gradually as if ascending a ladder. 

Our word crystal, again, is of Greek descent, and 
literally signifies ice, being derived from the Greek 
xpvos, cruos (cold), and o-tsKKw, stello (to contract). 
The word was applied to designate the rock-crystals, 
which the ancients, according to Pliny, believed to 
be water congealed by the action of cold. He says 
in book xxxvii. ch. ii. : " As touching crystal, it pro- 
ceeded of cold, for a liquor it is, congealed by 
extreme frost in the manner of ice ; and for proof 
hereof you shall find crystal in no place else but 
where the winter snow is frozen hard ; so, as we 
may boldly say, it is very ice and nothing else, 
whereupon the Greeks have given it the right name, 
crystallus" (ice). At Job vi. 16, the Greek word 
is used and translated in our Bibles by the word 



96 BOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 

ice, and so again in the 148th Psalm, v. 8, where it 
is translated hail. From the Greek word the Ro- 
mans obtained their word crystallum, whence we have 
got crystal. So our word cemetery, and the French 
word cimetiere, derived from the Latin coemeterium, 
springs from the Greek xoi/jwitoq^iov, koimeterion (a 
dormitory), from xoj/xao;, Jcoimao (to lie down to 
sleep) ; and cemetery is thus a beautiful and ex- 
pressive word on the lips of Christians, who, being 
assured of a resurrection, use the words falling 
asleep, as synonymous with dying. The Saxons 
had a somewhat similar expression for a sepulchre, 
which they called a slapgrave, a sleepgrave. It is 
somewhat curious to note that the heathens univer- 
sally allowed the natural resemblance between death 
and sleep ; but, knowing nothing of the resurrection, 
never described death as sleep, without prefixing an 
epithet of endurance, precluding the idea of waking. 
Thus Homer, describing the death of Iphidamus, 
when slain by Agamemnon, says " he slept a brazen 
sleep." Virgil in the 10th book of the ' ^Eneid,' 
describing a hero's death, says, — ■ 

" An iron sleep o'erwhelrns his swimming sight, 
And his eyes close in everlasting night." 

Catullus, contrasting the setting and rising of the 

sun with death, says — 

" The sun that sets with light refined 
Keturns to gild the plains ; 
When man's short day hath once declined 
Perpetual night remains." 






Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 97 

Moschus, a Greek poet, after observing that some 
plants died, and revived in a succeeding year, pro- 
ceeds to say — 

" But we, or great, or wise, or brave, 
Once dead, and silent in the grave, 
Senseless remain ; one rest we keep, 
One long, eternal, imawaken'd sleep." 

Horace, in his Ode to Virgil, lamenting the early 
death of his friend Quintilianus, complains — 

" That an eternal sleep had seized him." 

From the fragments of the Twelve Tables which 
have come down to us we learn that these laws pro- 
hibited the burying of the Roman dead in cities, 
The Romans consequently used cemeteries, which 
were without the walls of the towns ; and when the 
Christian religion was established under the Em- 
peror Constantine, the Christians selected these 
cemeteries as sites for churches, because the bodies 
of martyrs had been buried there. Cuthbert, arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, was the first (as we learn 
from Dugdale's ' Monasticon,' vol. i. p. 2) who ob- 
tained from the Pope, about the year 742, the 
liberty of having burial-places within cities in Eng- 
land — a custom which, though condemned by all, it 
has taken upwards of 1100 years to change. When 
the practice of burning the dead was introduced 
amongst the Romans, the ashes were collected in 
sepulchral urns, which were placed in small arched 
holes in their villas. The place appropriated to 

F 



98 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 

receive these urns was called columbarium, from 
columba, a dove, from the fancied resemblance which 
these arched holes bore to the recesses in a dove- 
cote. The small room V. in the British Museum 
(Townley Marbles) represents a columbarium on a 
large scale. 

Mr. Trench, in his book ' On the Study of Words,' 
has given us the derivation of the word church, from 
the Greek nvqios, Jcurios, The Lord, but he has 
referred only to one of the senses in which we use 
the word church, viz. as a building devoted to holy 
purposes ; but as the word is frequently used in 
another sense, when we speak of the church, it will 
be well to consider its proper meaning when so 
used. The word is thus used Acts ii. 47, " The 
Lord added daily to the church ;" St. Matthew xvi. 
18, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 
build my church;" St. Matthew xviii. 17, "And if 
he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the 
church;" and in many other places in the New 
Testament. Now in all these passages above quoted, 
and I believe in every passage where the word 
church is found in the English translation of the 
New Testament, the word sx-xXwaioc, eJcMesia, is 
found in the Greek version, which word is carried 
without change into the Latin language, and also 
into the English, for in the Latin we find ecclesia, 
and in the English ecclesiastic. To understand 
therefore the proper meaning of this word the church, 



Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 99 

we must trace out the meaning of the Greek word 
sxx"ky<jioc, eJcMesia. The word comes from ex, ek, 
out, and xxXsco, Jcaleo, to call, and means therefore 
those who are called out, that is, called out of the 
world to be the servants of God, or, as we find it in 
St. John xv. 19, "I have chosen you out of the 
world." The whole community of Christians there- 
fore constitute the church; but though we may be 
members of the community professing Christianity, 
it does not follow that we are members of Christ, 
as we learn from the parable of the tares, and from 
the comparison with vessels of gold and silver, of 
wood and earth, and of vessels of honour and dis- 
honour, mentioned by St. Paul, 2 Tim. ii. 20. To 
confine the meaning of this word, as is too often 
done, to the officers of the church, or to the clergy, 
in contradistinction to the laity, is an improper and 
unwarranted use of the word. It is not only an 
attempt to appropriate to a class the rights which 
belong to the whole community of Christians, and 
which all who value belonging to that community 
will resist ; but it is the human creation of an inter- 
vening power between the soul and its Maker, to 
which homage is required to be paid which is due 
to Deity alone. As the church therefore is the 
community evoked or called out of the world, so the 
churches of Ephesus, Sardis, &c, consisted of the 
whole community of Christians at those places : and 
the Protestant Church of England is the whole body 

F 2 



100 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 

of Protestant Christians in England ; and the Ro- 
man Catholic Church in England is the whole body 
of Roman Catholics in England. 

The word chancel, used by us to designate that 
part of the church in which the communion-table is 
placed, obtains its name from the Latin word can- 
celli, derived from the Greek xiykkir, kigklis, from 
xXetw, kleio, to shut as a door. The cancelli were 
cross bars anciently used to separate this part of 
the church from the nave, by lattice -work, as it now 
is by railings. The word chancel is in many churches 
applied to chantries or chapels within the church, 
set apart for particular families, which are so called 
from their being separated from the body of the 
church by lattice- work. 

From the same Latin word we obtain our word 
to cancel, meaning to cross out or deface. So the 
word chancellor, in Latin cancellarius, in its primary 
meaning denoted one who was placed at the lattice- 
work of a window or doorway to introduce visitors, 
and was literally no more than a doorkeeper. We 
are told by Flavius Vopiscus that the Roman Em- 
peror Carinus, who succeeded jointly with his bro- 
ther to the throne a.d. 284, made one of his can- 
cellarii prefect of the city, which caused great 
dissatisfaction. Lord Coke, in his fourth Institute, 
says that the chancellor was a notary or scribe 
under the Emperor, and derived his name from 
sitting within the cancelli, to avoid being crowded 



Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 101 

by the people ; and Judge Blackstone says that the 
office passed from the Roman Empire to the Roman 
Church, ever emulous of imperial state, and that 
hence every bishop has to this day his chancellor ; 
and when the modern kingdoms of Europe were 
established upon the ruins of the Empire, almost 
every state preserved its chancellor, with different 
jurisdictions and dignities. Polydore Virgil, in his 
1 History of England,' book ix., states that the office 
was introduced into this country at the Conquest; 
but Lord Coke, in his fourth Institute, shows that 
this was an error, and enumerates several Saxon 
kings who had chancellors. 

The words critick, criterion, critical, and crisis, 
though having different significations with us, all 

© © © i 

come from the Latin, crisis (judgment), formed 
from the Greek word xpivco, crino (to judgej. A 
critic should be an impartial judge ; criterion is the 
standard whereby anything is judged ; a critical 
point is a point requiring nice judgment ; and crisis^ 
though, in its original meaning, signifying judg- 
ment, and afterwards, the anxious moment when 
judgment was given, is now more generally used to 
denote the period of conflict between nature and 
disease, or some other important period requiring 
judicious treatment, or the point of time at which 
decision becomes necessary. 

The word discriminate, and its compounds, are 
from the same origin, signifying to separate or dis- 



102 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 

tinguish by the exercise of sound judgment ; and 
crime also springs from the same source, signifying 
an act committed in violation of the law, for which 
the offender is subject to be judged. 

The word hypocrite unquestionably comes from 
the same origin, being compounded of the two 
Greek words, viro, under, and xgtvw, Jcrino (to judge). 
Suetonius uses the word hypocrite, to denote one 
who stood by an actor in a play to prompt him, and 
the word may have signified one who passed judg- 
ment on a play. I cannot say that it ever had this 
signification, since I can find no authority for say- 
ing so ; but however this may be, the word came to 
signify the actor himself, and Demosthenes uses the 
word uTroKMpiToci, hupoJcekritai, when he says that 
" Aristodemus often acted, or personated the Anti- 
gone of Sophocles," and other Greek writers use 
the word in the same sense. 

From thus denoting an actor, the word came to 
signify a dissembler, or one who acted a feigned 
character, and so now is generally applied to those 
who assume the appearance of virtue or religion 
without in reality having anything of either. 

From the same Greek word koivco, Jcrino (to 
judge), and the Greek prefix W, dia, is derived our 
word to discern, and the Greek word is so trans- 
lated in our Bibles. St. Matt. xvi. 3, "Oh ye 
hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky," &c. ; 
the word, however, comes to us direct from the Latin 



Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 103 

cernere, anciently pronounced kernere. The same 
Greek word, signifying to discern, again occurs 

1 Cor. xi. 29, and is similarly translated, — " For 
he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and 
drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the 
Lord's body." The word also, in this passage trans- 
lated damnation, is in the Greek xpifAu, Jcrima, from 
the same source, x§»v&/, Jcrino (to judge). I find this 
word xpifxa, Jcrima, at sixteen other places in the New 
Testament, — viz. Acts xxiv. 25 ; Heb. vi. 2 ; Rom. 
ii. 2, 3 ; Matt. vii. 2 ; Gal. v. 10 ; 1 Peter iv. 17 ; 

2 Peter ii. 3 ; 1 Tim. iii. 6 ; Luke xxiii. 40 ; Luke 
xxiv. 20 ; Jas. iii. 1 ; Matt, xxiii. 14 ; Mark xii. 40 : 
Luke xx. 47 ; Rom. iii. 8 ; and Rom. xiii. 2. 

In the first seven of these passages the word is 
in our Bible translated judgment, in the four next 
condemnation, and in the five last, damnation. The 
three first of these five last are the same, being 
simply different records of the same passage by 
three of the Evangelists, but each of them contains 
the adjective greater preceding the word damnation. 
" The same shall receive the greater damnation" It 
is obvious therefore from this circumstance, that the 
word damnation in the sense in which it is used in 
these three passages, does not mean the sentence 
of eternal punishment, or exclusion from Divine 
mercy ; for if so, the adjective greater would have 
no meaning. It is plain that the word is simply 
equivalent to condemnation or judgment. So in the 



104 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 

next of the five passages referred to, where the word 
is in our translation rendered damnation, that at 
Romans iii. 8, " whose damnation is just ;" and in 
the remaining passage, Rom. xiii. 2, " and they 
that resist shall receive to themselves damnation" — 
it is quite impossible to suppose that St. Paul 
meant to say, that those who resisted the civil au- 
thority should suffer eternal punishment, and be 
excluded from Divine mercy ; it is clear that his 
meaning was, that resistance to authority was an 
offence for which the offender would be called to 
account or be judged, — so it is equally clear that 
the word damnation used at 1 Cor. xi. 29, " eateth 
and drinketh damnation to himself," does not mean 
eternal punishment; and as this is too often sup- 
posed, it is much to be regretted that the Greek 
word should have received so harsh a translation, 
unless indeed, as I suspect was the case, the word 
was then in common use, and synonymous with 
condemnation. The Apostle, rebuking those who 
made no discrimination between the religious ordi- 
nance of which he was speaking and a common 
meal, enforces the duty of previous self-examination, 
adding, that the neglect of this duty would call 
down the righteous judgment of the Almighty. 
That this is the correct sense of the word here 
used, is confirmed by reference to a passage where 
eternal punishment is clearly spoken of. At 2 Pet. 
ii. 3, the Apostle, speaking of teachers of false doc- 



Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 105 

trines, who denied our Saviour, adds, " whose judg- 
ment now of a long time lingereth not, and their 
damnation slumbereth not." Now in this passage 
we fortunately meet with both the words judgment 
and damnation, and in the Greek we find very 
different words used to express them, the former 
word being expressed by the word xpt^a, Jcrima, of 
which I have been treating, whereas the damnation, 
or eternal punishment to follow the judgment and 
condemnation, is represented by a very different 
word, the word xttcoXsix, apoleia (destruction), from 
whence is derived the name Apollyon, given Rev. 
ix. 11, to the angel of the bottomless pit. 

We must bear in mind also, that the Sacrament 
of the Lord's Supper was not solemnised among the 
early Christians in the same manner as with us, but 
was administered at the ay aim, agape, or love- 
feasts, in use among the primitive Christians, called 
by St. Jude 12, in our translation, " feasts of cha- 
rity," and referred to in Pliny's celebrated Epistle 
to Trajan, written about the year 112, wherein, 
speaking of the Christians in Bithynia, of which 
place he was governor, he says, " that they were 
wont on a stated day to meet together before it was 
light, and to sing a hymn to Christ as a God, alter- 
nately, and to oblige themselves by a sacrament or 
oath not to do anything that was ill, after which it 
was their custom to depart, and to meet again at a 
common but innocent meal." St. Chrysostom, who 

F 3 



106 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 

was born at Antioch about the year 344, gives the 
following account of these feasts, which he derives 
from the Apostolical practice : he says, " The first 
Christians had all things in common, as we read in 
the Acts of the Apostles, but when that equality of 
possessions ceased (as it did even in the Apostles' 
time), the love -feast was substituted in the room of 
it. Upon certain days, after partaking of the Lord's 
Supper, they met at a common feast, the rich bring- 
ing provisions, and the poor, who had nothing, being 
invited." These feasts were always attended with 
receiving the Holy Sacrament ; but a difference of 
opinion exists as to the time of receiving, whether 
before or after the feast, and probably the practice 
varied at different places. During the first three 
centuries these feasts were held in the churches, or 
in the same building in which the Christians assem- 
bled for divine worship. In process of time they 
were much abused, and the abuses committed at 
them became so notorious, that the holding of them 
(in churches at least) was solemnly condemned at 
the Council of Carthage in the year 307, and again 
at the Council of Laodicea, in the year 364. In 
imitation of these " Love-feasts" our " wakes" were 
instituted. They were established in England by 
Pope Gregory the Great, who was elected Pope in 
590, and died 604. In an epistle to Melitus, the 
British abbot, he gave instructions to be delivered 
to Austin, whom he sent to Britain to convert the 



Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 107 

Saxons ; and in these instructions, he directs that 
the solemn anniversary of dedication should be cele- 
brated in those churches which were made out of 
heathen temples, with religious feasts kept in sheds 
or arbories, made up with branches, or boughs of 
trees round the church ; and in the laws of Edward 
the Confessor, peace and protection are given to all 
parishes during the solemnity of the day of dedica- 
tion, and the same privilege to all who were going 
or returning from such solemnity. In the Saxon 
times, the Church method of reckoning the day was 
from sunset to sunset, so that Sunday commenced 
from the sunset of Saturday, and any festival or 
fast-day commenced from the sunset of the pre- 
ceding day. The evening, therefore, was the com- 
mencement of the sacred day, when the people were 
accustomed to repair to the church and join in the 
religious exercises. We preserve evidence of this 
mode of reckoning time, in our words sennight, the 
seventh night — twelfth night — and fortnight, the 
fourteenth night. 

The ivake (or customary festival of the dedication 
of churches) signified therefore the same as vigil 
or eve. Dugdale, in his ' Antiquities of Warwick- 
shire,' quoting an old manuscript legend, says, " And 
ye shall understand and know how the evyns were 
first found in old time. In the beginning of holi 
chirche it was so, that the pepull came to the 
chirche with candellys brennynge, and would wake 



108 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 

and coome with light towards night to the chirche 
in their devotions ;" and after enumerating the bad 
practices that ensued among the people in conse- 
quence, he adds, " wherefore holy faders ordained 
the pepull to leve that waking and to fast the evyn. 
But it is called vigilia^ that is, waking, in English, 
and it is called the evyn, for at evyn they were 
wont to come to chirche/' In a council held at 
Oxford, anno 1222, it was ordained that among 
other festivals should be observed the day of dedi- 
cation of every church within the proper parish, 
and in a synod under Archbishop Islip (who was 
promoted to the see of Canterbury, 1349), the dedi- 
cation feast is mentioned with particular respect. 
This solemnity was at first celebrated on the very 
day of dedication as it annually returned, but the 
bishops sometimes changed the day to some other 
day, and especially to Sunday, whereon the people 
could best attend the devotions and rites intended 
in the ceremony, and at last this convenience of 
Sunday above the week days was the reason of 
attempting an universal change ; and Henry VIII., 
in 1536, ordered that the dedication of churches 
should in all places be celebrated on the first Sunday 
of the month of October, but the order was ■ not 
strictly enforced nor obeyed. It is said, however, 
that there were two festivals observed in all parishes, 
the dedication day and the festival of the patron 
saint, and that the order in convocation of Henry 



[ 



Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 109 

VIII. not only changed the day of celebration of 
the feast of dedication, but attempted to abolish 
also the festival of the saint, but this being- the 
favourite festival of the people, they gradually ceased 
to attend the festival of dedication, which has now 
been entirely discontinued, whilst the saint's day 
festival still subsists in the altered form of the 
country wake, whilst the wakes were converted into 
fasts, preserving the name of vigils or eves. 

The wake or feast of dedication, however, con- 
tinued to prevail for many years, until the Puritans 
began to exclaim against them as a remnant of 
popery, and at the summer assizes held at Exeter 
in 1627 the judges made an order for the suppres- 
sion of all wakes in the county of Devon, and a 
like order was made in 1631 for the county of 
Somerset by Judge Richardson ; but on Bishop 
Laud's complaint of this innovating humour, the 
king commanded the last order to be revoked, which 
Judge Richardson refusing to do, an account was 
required from the Bishop of Bath and Wells how 
the said feast days, church ales, wakes, and revels 
were for the most part celebrated and observed in 
his diocese. On receipt of these instructions the 
Bishop advised with seventy-two of the most orthodox 
of his clergy, who certified under their hands that 
on these feast-days (which generally fell on a Sun- 
day) the service was more solemnly performed and 
the church much better frequented, both in the fore- 



110 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VI. 

noon and afternoon, tban on any other Sunday in 
the year; that the people very much desired the 
continuance of them ; that the ministers did in most 
places do the like for these reasons, viz., for pre- 
serving the memorial of the dedication of their 
several churches, &c. &c. On the return of this 
certificate, Judge Richardson was again cited to the 
council -table, and peremptorily commanded to re- 
verse the former order. In Holland the dedication 
of a church is called JcerJc misse, that is, church 
mass, or the solemn service on the day of the 
church's consecration. Their fairs also are called 
by the same name, kerk masses, clearly indicating 
that the latter arose out of the former. 

The case was the same in England — the resort 
of the people to the churches to celebrate these 
wakes was the origin of our fairs (so called from 
the Latin word feria, a holiday), which were gene- 
rally held in the churchyard, or even in the church, 
on the same day as the wake, until the indecency 
and scandal occasioned thereby were so great as to 
require reformation. In the year 1230 the arch- 
deacons within the diocese of Lincoln were directed 
to inquire into and regulate this abuse ; and Henry 
III., by express mandate, prohibited the keeping of 
Northampton fair in the church or churchyard of 
All Saints in that town, and the Bishop of Lincoln 
(Robert Grosthead), following the king's example, 
sent positive instructions through his whole diocese 






Chap. VI. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Ill 

prohibiting all fairs to be kept in such sacred places. 
A little later, in 1285, we find that a general Act 
of Parliament was passed, " forbidding fairs or 
markets to be held in churchyards ;" and again in 
1448 another statute was passed " that all fairs or 
markets on Ascension Day, Corpus Christi Day, 
Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday, or any other Sunday 
(except the four Sundays in harvest), the Assump- 
tion of Our Lady, All Saints, and Good Friday, 
should cease to exhibit all goods or merchandise, 
necessary victual only excepted." Notwithstanding 
these mandates and statutes the practice long pre- 
vailed, for in a comment on the Ten Command- 
ments, by way of dialogue between Dives and 
Pauper, printed at London in the year 1493, we 
find the following : — 

" Dices. What sayest thou of them, that hold 
Markets arid feirs in holy church 
And in sanctuary ? 

" Pauper. Both the byer, and the seller, and 
Men of holy church, that 
Maintain them, or suffer them, when 
They might let it — be accursed." 



112 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Consideration of Words in daily Use with us. 

The subject of the last two chapters — the inter- 
change of letters in languages — might be continued 
almost to an unlimited extent. I do not, however, 
propose to weary the reader, and pursue the subject 
further, but will consider some words, the origin of 
which is not duly regarded by us, although the 
words themselves are in general use. 

How frequently, for instance, do we use the word 
"purlieu, without at all discovering its original mean- 
ing. In Manwood's ' Forest Laws,' ch. xx., a 
purlieu is described to be " a certain territory of 
ground adjoining unto a forest, meered and bounded 
with unmoveable marks, meers, and boundaries, 
known by matter of record only, which territory of 
ground was also once forest, and afterwards dis- 
afforested again by the perambulators made for the 
severing of the new forests from the old." From 
this description we obtain a clue to the derivation of 
the word from the French words pur and lieu (a free 
place), being those lands which were once subject to 
the rigour of the forest laws, but, being taken from 
the forest, became pure or free from those laws. 
Manwood tells us that Henry II., not contented 



Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 113 

with the forests as they existed at the time of his 
succeeding to the throne in 1154, enlarged them "by 
taking in the lands adjoining, which example was 
followed by his son Richard I., and afterwards by 
King John ; so that " the forrests in every place 
were so much enlarged, that the greatest part of this 
realm was forrest, to the great grief and sorrow of 
all the best sort of the inhabitants of this land." 
The barons, in consequence, petitioned King John 
to disafforest the lands so added to the ancient 
forests, and these lands so disafforested were those 
that became purlieus. 

Again, the word pulpit, when duly considered, 
carries our thoughts back to the Roman theatre, in 
which the higher part of the stage, where the actors 
recited and performed their parts, was called pul- 
pitum, as distinguished from the lower part, orches- 
trum, where they danced. 

The word chapel is, by Littleton, in his Latin 
Dictionary, derived from capella (a goat), because 
formerly the tabernacle was covered with the skins 
of goats, a derivation which seems to me preferable 
to that of Sir Henry Spelman, who imagined that it 
came from eapsa (a chest), in which the relics of 
martyrs were preserved. 

The word gazette is of daily use amongst us, and 
we rest satisfied with the knowledge that it means a 
newspaper, without inquiring how it happened to 
acquire that name. The gazetta, the origin of 



114 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 

gazette, was a Venetian coin of the value of a half- 
penny, but now no longer current. The war which 
the Republic of Venice waged against the Turks in 
Dalmatia in 1563 gave rise to the custom of com- 
municating military news in written sheets, which 
were read in a particular place to those who were 
desirous to hear them, and who paid for this privilege 
a gazetta, a name which by degrees was transferred 
to the paper itself in Italy and France, and passed 
over into England. 

The first ' Court Gazette' in England was pub- 
lished in 1665 at Oxford whilst the Court resided 
there, on account of the plague in London ; but on 
the removal of the Court to London, the title was 
changed to the ' London Gazette.' Before the intro- 
duction of printed newspapers in England, great 
families, however, had a sort of gazetteer in London, 
who transmitted to them the news of the day in 
written letters, and the word was in use early in the 
reign of King James I., as appears from John 
Donne's verses upon T. Cory at' s Crudities, pub- 
lished in 1661 — 

" As deep a Statesman as a Gazeteer" 

In using the word artillery we have a clear know- 
ledge of the meaning the word is now intended to 
convey, but we do not see its derivation ; and indeed 
our etymologists have so differed about its origin, 
that I proceed with great diffidence to trace it. 



Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 115 

The earliest record of the word that I have met 
with is in Sir Henry Spelman, voce ' Bombard,' 
where, quoting the tables of the civil and military 
expenses of Edward III. in 1344, he mentions — 

Mariners 60 

Armourers 7 

Artillers 6 

Gunners 6 

Now, it seems clear that artillers, being named as 
distinct from gunners, they did not at this time belong 
to the latter class of warriors, and I think that, as 
we proceed, we shall see that they were then simply 
archers. It is said in Stowe's ' London' M that in 
the 13th year of the reign of Henry VII., 1496, all 
the gardens which had continued, time out of mind, 
without Moorgate, to wit, about and beyond the 
lordship of Fensbury (Finsbury) were destroyed, and 
of them was made a plain field for archers to shoot 
in. The land was enclosed, and called the Artillery 
Ground." 

In 1541 a statute was passed, intitled " A Bill 
for the maintaining of Artillery, and the debarring 
of unlawful games." This statute was passed on 
the petition of the bowyers, fletchers (arrow-makers), 
stringers, and arrow-head makers, who complained 
" that divers subtil, inventative, and crafty persons, 
daily find many new and crafty games, as loggetting 
in the fields, slidethrift, otherwise called shovegroat, 
by reason whereof archery was sore decayed, and 



116 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 

like to be more minished, and divers bowyers and 
fletchers, for lack of work, gone to Scotland, and 
other places." The statute enacts, that every man, 
under sixty years of age, shall have bows and arrows 
continually in his house, and instruct his children to 
shoot ; and enacts, that butts be made in every city 
and town, and that the inhabitants shall exercise 
themselves with long bows in shooting at the same. 
The statute then prohibits any artificer or servant 
from playing the games of bowling, coyting, cloysh- 
cayls, half-bowl tennis, dicing-table, or cards, except 
at Christmas, in their master's houses or presence, 
but enables the master to license his servants to 
play at cards, dice, or tables, with their master, or 
with any other gentleman repairing to their master. 
It then repeals all other statutes made for the 
restraint of unlawful games, or for the maintenance 
of artillery. We find that in the same session 
another Act was passed " concerning crosbowes and 
handguns," which recites former statutes relating to 
these weapons, and adds, " that, since the passing of 
them, divers malicious and evil-disposed persons 
have wilfully and shamefully perpetrated and done 
divers detestable and shameful murders, robberies, 
felonies, riots and routs with crosbowes, little short 
handguns, and little haquebuts, and that divers 
gentlemen, yeomen, and serving men, have laid 
aside the good and laudable exercise of the longbow, 
and that the said evil-disposed persons have used, 



Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 117 

and do daily use, to ride and go on the King's high- 
way, and elsewhere, having with them crossbowes 
and little handguns, ready furnished with quarrells, 
gunpowder, fire, and touch." The statute then 
prohibits all persons, except such as had a hundred 
a year in land, annuities, or offices, from using or 
keeping in their houses or elsewhere any "cross- 
bowe, handgun, haquebut, or demyhake ;" and, 
after regulating the length of the stock and gun, 
authorises the use of these weapons in time of war, 
and also, by way of practice, against butts or banks, 
whereby to be better able to assist in the defence of 
the realm, in case of need. Persons inhabiting within 
five miles of the coasts, or within twelve miles of the 
borders of Scotland, and the inhabitants of the Isles 
of Wight, Man, Jersey, Guernsey, and Anglesea, 
were exempted from the operation of the Act, and 
allowed to use handguns, haquebuts, and demi- 
hakes, " so that it be at no manner of deere, hearne, 
shovelard, fezant, partridge, wild swan, or wild elke." 
There is no doubt but that this statute being in 
the same year as the one before mentioned, " for 
maintaining of artillery and the debarring of un- 
lawful games," was passed at the instigation of the 
bowyers and fletchers, and to enforce the continuance 
of the use of the longbow ; and it is clear from these 
statutes that, down to this period, 1541, the word 
artillery was applied to the longbow, and not to the 
crossbow or handgun. 



118 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 

Notwithstanding these statutes, the longbow con- 
tinued to give way to other weapons, and these 
worthy bowyers, fletchers, stringers, and arrowhead- 
makers, continued to " minish," for, about the year 
1570, they petitioned Queen Elizabeth concerning 
their decayed condition, by reason of the discon- 
tinuance of the use of archery, and toleration of 
unlawful games and exercises ; and the Queen, in 
consequence, appointed commissioners in each county 
for the reformation of unlawful games, and for the 
maintenance and exercise of shooting, and in the 
following year a statute was passed directing the im- 
portation of bow-staves. We also find that in Sep- 
tember, 1583, a general meeting of 3000 London 
archers was held in Smithfield, where, having per- 
formed their several evolutions, they shot at the Target 
for Glory ; and we find that Charles I., as late as 
1633, issued a commission " to prevent the inclosure 
of the fields near London, so as to interrupt the 
necessary and profitable exercise of shooting." 

Fairfax, in his translation of Tasso's " Godfrey of 
Boulogne, or the Recovery of Jerusalem," which was 
published in 1600 (book xvii. section49),uses the word 
artillery to denote archery in the following passage : — 

" While thus the Princesse said, his hungrie eine 
Adrastus fed on her sweet beauties light. 
The Gods forbid (quoth he) one shaft of thine 
Should be discharg'd 'gainst that discourteous knight ; 
His heart unworthy is (shootresse divine) 
Of thine ' artillerie ' to feel the might." 



Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 119 

The present Authorised Version of the Bible was 
published in 1611, and at that period it would seem 
that the word artillerie was considered the proper 
word to designate bows and arrows, for at 1 Sam. 
ch. xx. ver. 40, it is said, " And Jonathan gave his 
artillery unto his lad, and said unto him, Go carry 
them to the city" — the word referring to the bow 
and arrows which Jonathan had just before been 
using. In Cotgrave's French and English Dictionary, 
published as late as 1650, we find the words artillier, 
a bowyer, and artilier du Roy, the King's bowman. 
I think, therefore, we may assume that, down to this 
latter date, the word denoted archery, and was ac- 
quired by us from France, and that it is only of 
comparatively late years that it has been applied to 
cannon and great ordnance. As to the derivation 
of the French word, from which our word appears to 
be undoubtedly derived, after premising that Johnson 
says " the word artillery is always used of missive 
weapons," I would suggest the possibility of the 
word being a compound of the Latin word aer (air), 
and telum (a weapon). The word in our language 
which most nearly approaches it is artery, used to 
denote the vessels which convey the blood from the 
heart to all parts of the body, but to which our 
ancestors gave the name of arteries, because, finding 
them always empty after death, they supposed them 
to be air-vessels. 

Attainted, from the Latin word attinctus (stained), 



120 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 

means one found guilty, and whose character is thus 
tainted. Persons attainted or found guilty of high 
treason forfeited their estates to the crown: the 
word forfeit, being derived from the French word 
forfait, wickedness, signified that by reason of guilt 
the estates of such persons reverted to the crown, 
the condition of good behaviour annexed to the 
grant of the estates, either directly or impliedly, 
having been broken. The same consequence fol- 
lowed a crime against the king under the Jewish 
dispensation, as we learn from the narrative of Ahab 
and Naboth. The charge against Naboth was, not 
that he blasphemed God only, but that he " blas- 
phemed God and the king," and witnesses having 
been found to establish both charges, Naboth was 
stoned to death for blaspheming God and for blas- 
pheming the king— the vineyard was forfeited to 
Ahab. If the charge had been blasphemy against 
the Almighty alone, the consequence of forfeiture of 
the vineyard would not have occurred, but Naboth 
would have been put to death and his vineyard 
would have descended to his heir ; for we learn by 
the 24th chap, of Leviticus, v. 16, that death, not 
forfeiture, was the punishment of blaspheming the 
name of the Lord. Among the Romans there ex- 
isted a practice of expunging a person's name from 
the public list of accused, hung up in the treasury, 
which was termed abolitio, derived from the two 
words ah (from) and oleo (to smell), that is, to do 



Chap. Vll. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 121 

away with the taint. The act of abolition cleared 
the stain from the character of the accused, and 
hence we get our word abolish, to annul or put an 
end to. 

The common use of our words abbot and abbey 
leads us to fancy them native words, whereas they, 
as well as the French word abbe, spring from a 
much earlier source, having their origin in the He- 
brew word ab, signifying a father, the root of the 
name Abraham, "for a father of many nations have 
I made thee." 

From ab the Syrians formed abba, used by St. 
Mark, ch. xiv., and by St. Paul in his epistle to the 
Romans, ch. viii. The Greeks retained the word in 
their a/3/3as-, abbas, and the Romans in abbas, and 
we have continued it in our word abbot, anciently 
written " abb«t," to denote the father or head of a 
monastery. The application of the name to per- 
sons presiding over monasteries was resisted by St. 
Jerome as an infringement of the Divine command 
to " call no man Father upon earth." As the abbot 
was the head, so were the friars the brethren of the 
establishment, in the same way as the master and 
brethren of an hospital with us constitute the mem- 
bers of such a foundation; the word friar being 
a corruption of the French word " frere," derived 
from the Latin frater, a brother. Innumerable 
instances might be found of the word " frere " being 
used by our early writers ; but one, and that a short 

G 



122 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 

one, shall suffice from Chaucer, 'The Prologue,' v, 
208:— 

" A frere there was, a wanton and a mery." 

In our word freemason, descriptive of the brethren 
belonging to the fraternity of masons, we preserve 
the original word, the prefix free referring not to 
the immunities of that body, but to their brother- 
hood, the word freemason being a corruption of the 
French frere (a brother), and magon (a mason). 
We find that in monastic times many charitable 
establishments called bedehouses existed, and which, 
though not now so called, except in a few instances, 
are to be distinctly traced. At Stamford there is 
still a bedebouse, founded in 1493 by William 
Brown, and the statistical account of Scotland, de- 
scribing the parish of Ruthven in Banffshire, says, 
" There is a bedehouse still in being, though in bad 
repair, and six bedesmen in the establishment, but 
none of them live in the house. Again we trace 
the word in the college of Vicars Choral belonging 
to York Cathedral, called the Bedern. The word 
is derived from the Saxon word bidden or beden (to 
pray), from whence came bedesman or beedman, 
signifying one who prayed for another, the inha- 
bitants of these almshouses praying for the souls of 
the founders or benefactors of them. The word 
bedesman was a common conclusion to letters in the 
time of Henry VIII, in the same way as a peti- 



Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 123 

tioner to the crown now concludes with the words 
" and your petitioner will for ever pray." Sir 
Thomas More, in his letters to Cardinal Wolsey, 
concludes them with the words, " Your humhle orator 
and most bounden beedman Thomas More ;" and 
Margaret Bryan, the governess of Lady Elizabeth, 
in writing to Lord Cromwell, signs herself " your 
daily bedewoman ;" and Shakspeare, in ' The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona,' Act i. Scene 1, uses the 
word and explains its meaning when Proteus says — 

" Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers, 
For I will be thy ' beadsman,' Valentine." 

To which Valentine replies — 

" And on a love-book pray for my success." 

Sir Henry Lee, champion to Queen Elizabeth in 
the year 1590, when old age and infirmities had 
come upon him, gave a masque at his seat at Qua- 
rendon in Bucks on his retirement from the office of 
champion, on which occasion a copy of verses alluding 
to his retirement was read before her Majesty, con- 
cluding with these words — 

" Goddess, vouchsafe this aged man his right 
To be your beadsman now, that was your knight." 

To bid beads was to say prayers, and before the 
invention of printing, when poor persons could not 
defray the expenses of a manuscript book, small 
balls of glass strung upon a thread were invented 
(and are still used by the Romanists) to assist their 

G 2 



124: ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 

memories in counting their prayers, and hence the 
word, which primarily denoted the prayer itself, 
afterwards signified the instrument used to assist the 
memory of the person praying. These beads, pro- 
fessedly hallowed by the Pope's consecration, were 
in former days imported into England, but such 
importation was prohibited by statute in the year 
1570. Gower, our old English writer, uses the 
words bid thy bede in the following passage : — 

" Beware, therefore, and bid thy bede, 
And do nothing in holy church 
But that thou might by reason worthe." 

With us, to this day, the prayer before the sermon 
is still known by the name of the bidding prayer, and 
still we say to bid or forbid the banns. 

Our word beadle is also of the same origin, such 
person having originally been the officer of the 
forest, who bid or summoned the people to attend 
the Court of the Forest ; and in after times, the 
officer who summoned the clergy and church officers 
to visitations ; and in later times, the officer of any 
Court whose duty it was to summon the people. 
The passage in our Bible, Dan. iii. 3 and 4 : — 
" And they stood before the image that Nebuchad- 
nezzar had set up, then an herald cried aloud, &c." 
is, in one of the editions of the Bible published in 
1551, thus rendered: — "Now when they stood 
before the image which Nebuchadnezzar set up, the 
Beadle cried out with all his might, &c." In early 



Chap. VII. OF THE EXGLISH LANGUAGE. 125 

times the tenants of many manors were bound by 
the customs of the manors to perform at the will or 
bidding of the Lords certain days' work, in order to 
gather in the Lord's harvest ; these days were called 
bidden days, or bindays, and the work performed 
was called Bederepe, from the Saxon bidden, to bid, 
and repe, to reap corn. The tenants who performed 
this service for the Lord of the manor, besides their 
ordinary daily meals, were rewarded with a more 
substantial entertainment at the end of the harvest, 
and this is the origin of our harvest home supper 
In the customs of the manor of Cheltenham beadrepe 
money is mentioned, which I conceive was a money 
payment in substitution for the feast, or in lieu of 
the daily meals. These bidden days, or rather the 
work performed on them, were afterwards rendered 
in Latin precarice, from the Latin word preco, to 
pray or bid, and as the days were selected at the will 
of the Lord, and therefore uncertain, precarious 
came to have that signification. Our word to bid 
comes from the same source, and in its early use had 
the sense of praying, which it has not entirely lost 
with us. Thus in the 2nd Epistle of St. John, v. 10 : 
" If there come any unto you, and bring not this 
doctrine, receive him not into your houses, neither 
bid him God speed," and again, Acts xviii. 20, 21 : 
" When they desired him to tarry longer with them, 
he consented not, but bade them farewell." The 
words so used were in fact a prayer commending the 



126 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 

parties to the Divine care, and were equivalent to 
the French d Dieu, the Spanish a Bios, and the 
Italian Addio, the parting benediction, committing a 
friend to the care of the Almighty. The foregoing 
expression " bade them farewell " is pure Saxon, for 
this word fare is also a Saxon word, signifying to go, 
to travel, to pass, and is very commonly used in 
early English. Hence we have the phrases a 
thoroughfare, a wayfaring, and a seafaring man ; so 
the price paid for travelling by land or water is called 
a, fare ; & ferry is a passage by water ; and a ford is 
that part of a river which is passed or fared on foot. 
The Vicar preaches his farewell sermon, and in 
return his auditors, anxious for his future happiness, 
express their wishes for his ivelfare. In the neigh- 
bourhood of London we find this word in use as 
descriptive of the passage, in the spring, of the 
young eels up the river Thames. This takes place 
from the neighbourhood of Blackfriars bridge to 
Chertsey in immense quantities, and this passage is 
called the eelfare. Rudder, in his history of 
Gloucestershire, treating of the parish of St. Briavels, 
says, " There is a great plenty of elvers taken in it 
(the river Wye) by means of hair sieves, every 
spring ;" and Collinson, in his history of Somerset- 
shire, treating of the parish of Keynsham, says, 
"The tide from Bristol comes up the Avon to this 
parish, and in the spring sometimes brings up large 
quantities of that small fish, called elvers, which are 



Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 127 

noted by Camden as a curiosity, but now reckoned 
common. It is evident, I think, that the word 
elvers used to denote the young eels, is simply the 
corruption of the beforementioned word eelfare. 
We may here mention that the parish of Keynsham 
before referred to, is celebrated for that well known 
fossil shell, the Ammonite, which is found in immense 
quantities in the quarries in the parish, varying in 
size from a quarter of an inch to upwards of two feet 
in diameter. This shell is the Hammonis Cornu 
of Pliny, still called by us the Cornua Ammonis, 
and by the French Comes d'Ammon, which name 
it received from its resemblance to the horns with 
which the head of Jupiter Ammon was sculptured. 
Pliny, in his 31st book, ch. 7, tells us that the word 
Ammonia comes from the Greek word onx^os ; 
ammos (sand), ammonia being a salt found below 
the sand in Cyrenaica in Africa. The Greeks and 
Romans became acquainted with the worship of 
Jupiter Ammon through the Cyrenians, and so in 
heathen mythology the addition of Ammonias given 
to Jupiter in allusion to the sandy desert of Sahara, 
where a temple to Jupiter was built. But to return 
from our digression : eels are not the only fish which 
at certain seasons ascend the rivers, for we know 
that the salmon quits the sea at certain seasons for 
the purpose of depositing its spawn in security, and 
for this purpose ascends rivers for hundreds of miles, 
forcing its way against the most rapid currents, and 



128 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 

leaping with amazing agility over cataracts or 
impediments eight or even ten feet in height. It is 
from this habit, indeed, that it derives its name from 
the Latin word salio, to leap. The manner of leap- 
ing is effected by the fish bending its tail towards 
its mouth, and then suddenly, like a bow let loose, 
forcing itself from this circular form, it springs with 
great force from the bottom to the top of the rock, or 
other obstacle impeding its progress. In this manner 
the salmon finds its way up the whole course of the 
Rhine as far as Basle, and somewhat higher, but 
here the falls of Schaffhausen oppose a formidable 
barrier to its advance, and stop its further progress, 
and this fish is consequently not found in Lake 
Constance. The word progress, just made use of, as 
well as digress, egress, regress, and transgress are 
compounds of the old English word for steps, or a 
flight of stairs, gnes being derived from the Latin 
word gressus (a step). We meet with this old word 
in the 'Itinerary of William of Wyrcestre,' who 
died about 1484. The first gryse called a slypp, 
going to the water, called Avyn water, to wash 
clothes, and to enter into the vessels and shippes 
that com en to the bak." We meet with it also in 
the ' Coventry Mysteries ' : — 

" If the fyfteen ' grees ' thou may ascend" — 
and again : 

" A Bahe of thre yer age so zynge (young) 
To come up these ' grees ' so up right." 






Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 129 

Shakspeare also uses the word in ' Timon of Athens,' 
Act iv. Scene 3 : — 

" For every * grize ' of fortune is smoothed by that below." 
So again in 'Twelfth Night,' Act iii. Scene 1 : — 

" Viola. — I pity you. 

Olivia. — That 's a degree of love. 
Viola. — No, not a ' grize,'' for 't is a vulgar proof 
That very oft we pity enemies." 

It is very evident from this last quotation that 
Shakspeare well knew the derivation of degree from 
grees. By degrees, is by steps ; the highest or lowest 
degree is the highest or lowest step ; and to take a 
degree at one of our Universities is to take a step. 
Again, the word pedigree, a tabular statement con- 
taining the descent of a family step by step, is a 
compound of this word and the Latin per, and 
means by steps. In Yorkshire and Lancashire, and 
other northern counties, the word gradeley or 
greadly, is in common use, and signifies orderly, 
and is apparently derived from the same source, and 
means step by step, by degrees, orderly. Pennant, 
in his 'British Zoology,' vol. i. p. 74, quoting Dr. 
Caius, informs us that the word greyhound is from 
the same source, giving as his reason that it is the 
first in rank or steps amongst dogs, ' ' quod prsecipui 
gradus sit inter canes." Richardson very justly 
terms this derivation fanciful, and states that the word 
is of unsettled etymology. The word greyhound is of 

G 3 



130 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VII. 

great antiquity with us, for in the 21st Canon of the 
Laws of Canute, quoted in Manwood's ' Forest 
Laws,' we find it enacted, " quod nullus mediocris 
habebit nee custodiet canes quos Angli greyhound 
appellant," that is, " that no mean man shall have 
or keep those dogs which the English call grey- 
hounds." We now only know the greyhound as a 
dog used in coursing the hare, but this use is of 
comparatively recent date (the first coursing club in 
England having been established at Swaffham, in 
Norfolk, only so late as 1776), and the dog we 
now use under this name has become (by what is 
termed improving the breed) a totally distinct animal 
from the greyhound mentioned in our early writers, 
which was endowed with the faculty of smell, and 
was the dog used in coursing deer. It seems to me 
that this even was not the earliest use to which this 
hound was applied, but that its primary use was in 
hunting the badger, the old name for which was 
the gray, and that thus it acquired the name of 
greyhound. No doubt the badger acquired the 
name of the gray from its colour, since the phrase 
"as grey as a badger," has become one of our pro- 
verbial expressions. The use of the word gray, to 
denote a badger, has not been discontinued by us 
for any great length of time ; for Holland, in his 
translation of Pliny, book viii. ch. 38, says, "The 
grayes, polcats, or brocks, have a cast by them- 
selves, where they be afraid of hunters : for they 



Chap. VII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 131 

will draw in their breath so hard, that their skin 
being stretched and puffed up withall, they will 
avoid the biting of the hound's tooth," and eighty 
years later we meet with the term in Littleton. In 
the Latin-English part of his dictionary he renders 
the word taxus into English by the words " a 
badger, grey, or brock," and in the English-Latin 
part of it, he renders, a gray, badger, or brock into 
Latin by the word taxus. Why the Romans gave 
the badger the name of taxus, which also with them 
signified a yew-tree, I have not been able to dis- 
cover. The yew-tree acquired its name of taxus 
from the Greek to^ov, toxon (a bow), since in all 
ages the wood of this tree has been used in the 
making of bows. The tree was supposed to possess 
poisonous qualities. Pliny, in his 16th book, eh. 
10, says, that "in Arcadia the yew-tree is so 
venemous, that whosoever take either repose or re- 
past under it are sure to die presently. And here- 
upon it cometh that those poysons wherewith arrow- 
heads be envenomed after some were called in times 
past Taxica, which we now name Toxica" Intoxicate, 
derived from this word, seems therefore in its literal 
sense to be, to deprive a person of reason by means 
of poison ; and hence came to signify to take away 
the senses by drink. The word yew was anciently 
with us spelt yugh and eugh, and is probably an old 
British word. That our present mode of spelling 
the word is not the original one, may be collected 



132 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap, VII. 

from the name of the parish of j5^hurst, near Ba- 
singstoke, on the summit of a hill, in which parish 
are some yew-trees of great antiquity, from which, 
or their predecessors no doubt, the parish took its 
name of Ewhurst, meaning the yew wood ; and the 
same occurs again in Wiltshire, in the parish of 
Colerne, in which parish there is a hamlet called 
Mwri&ge, no doubt signifying the ridge of yew 
trees. 



Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 133 

CHAPTEK VIII. 

Of Words derived from the Greek Language. 

In many instances we find words purely Greek in 
common use amongst us. Cholera is simply the 
Greek word for disease, and the parent of our 
word choler. Mustache is the Greek word for the 
upper lip, [augtoi%, mustax. Horizon is the Greek 
oqi^cov, orizon, signifying bounding or terminating 
the sight. Lichen is the Greek word for tree-moss. 
Cataract is Greek for rushing down, and in that lan- 
guage signified not only a waterfall, but was the 
name given to a sea-bird from its rushing down 
upon its prey. Pliny (book x. ch. 43) describes 
this bird in such a manner, as to leave no doubt 
but that it was the Solan goose. Our word catarrh, 
a defluxion, is from the same source. Paradox is 
pure Greek, for anything contrary to received opi- 
nion ; and paralysis is Greek for loosening of the 
nerves. Our word garret is by our etymologists 
derived from the French garite, the tower of a 
citadel ; but it seems to me to be the corruption of 
the Greek na§a, kara, the head or top of anything. 
Canopy is the corruption of the Greek xo/vwwsiov, 
Jconopion, from xwvwx}/, Jconops, el gnat or mosquito, 
konopeion with the Greeks signifying a tester of a 
bed for keeping away gnats. We meet with this word 



134 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 

in the 10th ch. of Judith, 21, where the passage is 
in our versions rendered, " Now Holofernes rested 
upon his bed under a canopy " — the word passed 
into the Latin language uncorrupted. Horace uses 
it in his 9th Epode, v. 16, — 

11 Interqne Signa turpe militaria 
Sol aspicit conopeum ;" 

and the sun beheld an infamous canopy spread in 
the midst of our military standards. The Romans 
borrowed these tents from the Egyptians, where 
they were used by the ladies to guard them from 
the mosquitos which infested the Nile. We have 
corrupted the word into canopy, and have extended 
its meaning from the covering of a bed to any shade 
or covering, and even to denote the spangled hea- 
vens. The Romans also gave the name of Papilio 
to a military tent ; and for the same reason, for 
papilio, with them in its primary sense, signified a 
fire-fly. This Latin word for a tent, the French 
corrupted into their word Pavilion, from whence we 
get our word Pavilion. But to return to words in 
use with us of Greek origin. Our word sere is 
direct from the Greek %npos, seros, dry ; and sincere 
is, I imagine, pure Greek, from gw, sun, with, and 
X7j§, ker, the heart, the parent of the Latin word for 
the heart, cor, and the root of the words core and 
cordial. Many of our etymologists, however, derive 
the word sincere from the Latin, sine cerd, without 
wax, applied to honey separated from the wax, and 



Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 135 

thus free from impurity ; but this derivation appears 
to me far-fetched. Again, we have lamp, from 
XafjLTTco, lampo, to shine. Ecstasy, from sx, eh, out 
of, and la-rxcu, istao, to stand or place, and signifies 
therefore that state of the mind in which it is for a 
time placed, or carried, as it were out of, or beyond 
itself. Our verb, to pine, is from the Greek Trstva, 
peina, hunger; and pirate from vrsipotms, peirates, a 
sea rover, from wsipaco, peirao, to rove. Energy is 
from the Greek words sv, en, in, and spyov, ergon, 
work ; and energetic therefore signifies one who is 
heartily engaged in his work. From the same 
Greek word for work, and Xsiros, leitos, public, we 
get our word liturgy, meaning public service. 

In the primitive days, Divine service was exceed- 
ingly simple, but by degrees a number of external 
ceremonies and extra prayers were added, until at 
length it was found necessary to reduce the service 
into writing, and regulate the manner of performing 
it, and this was what was called a liturgy. The 
Liturgy of the Church of England was composed in 
the year 1547, and slightly revised and established 
by Parliament in 1551; it was abolished in 1553 
by Queen Mary, but restored in 1558 by Queen 
Elizabeth, and revised in the following year. In 
1602, a few alterations were made in it, and in the 
office for private baptism, the words " lawful mi- 
nister" introduced, to prevent midwives and laymen 
from baptizing, and in 1661 the liturgy was brought 



136 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 

to its present state, and established by Act of Par- 
liament. The original Greek word, however, was 
used in civil affairs, and at Athens « the Xsirovqyi, 
leitourgi, were wealthy citizens, who were compelled 
by the laws of the State to undertake expensive 
offices at their own cost. In the 6th verse of the 
13th chap, of Romans, the word is used to denote 
the rulers of the people. From the same Greek word 
for work and j^eig, cheir (the hand), we framed our 
word chirurgeon (now corrupted into surgeon), signi- 
fying a medical practitioner, working with his hands, 
and dealing with outward cases, being prohibited 
from administering medicines internally. Surgery 
was originally practised in London by the Company 
of the Barbers, and we find Thomas Colard, Citizen 
and Barber, in the year 1467, bequeathing u his book 
of Fysyk and Surgery, called ' Rosse and Constan- 
tine,' to the Hall of Barbers to be laid in the 
Library." Another society, however, existed after- 
wards, who also practised surgery. 

In 1540 these two companies were united by an 
Act of Parliament, which provided that no barber 
should practise surgery, letting of blood, or any- 
thing relating thereto, except drawing of teeth, and 
that no surgeon should exercise the craft of bar- 
bery, which is described as " washing and shaving, 
and other feats thereto belonging." Physician is 
also of Greek origin, from Quait, phusis (nature), 
and from originally signifying a natural philosopher, 



Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 137 

has become descriptive of one skilled in the art of 
healing natural diseases. We still retain the ori- 
ginal meaning of the word in the adjective physical. 
Apothecary, also, is of Greek origin, from the Greek 
preposition a<zro, apo, and Q^xoo, thece (a place) ; and 
the Greek word a«ro9?jx*i, apothece, signified nothing 
more than a store or warehouse. In the New Testa- 
ment the word is frequently used to signify a barn 
or store-house for corn, one instance of winch, in 
St. Matthew xiii. 30, will suffice : — " Gather ye 
together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to 
burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn," 
the Greek word for barn being apothece. From 
this Greek word the Romans framed their word for 
a shop or warehouse, apotheca. In early times in 
England, spices, sugar-plums, and medical drugs 
were sold at the same shop by the grocers. Stowe 
tells us that the Company of the Apothecaries 
divided themselves from the ancient Society of 
Grocers ; and in 1540 we find a statute passed re- 
lating to apothecary drugs, and directing that four 
physicians should be annually chosen in London to 
inspect these drugs. It seems probable that when 
the apothecaries separated from the grocers, they 
adopted the name of apotheca for the shop where 
these drugs were sold, and thus acquired the name 
of apothecaries ; their connexion with the grocers 
seems, however, to have continued for many years 
after. Holland, in his translation of Pliny, book 



138 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 

xix., ch. 4, treats grocers and apothecaries as iden- 
tical, and speaking of the advantages of having 
gardens and herbs, he says, " The masters and mis- 
tresses thereof were not wont to run in the mer- 
chants' books for spicery, but changed the grocer or 
apothecaries' shop for the garden." 

The word engrave is from the Greek ei/, en (in), 
and yqoctpco, grapho (to write). Telegraph is from 
the same word, compounded with m\s, tele (far). 
This word, used by our ancestors to denote an in- 
strument that answered the end of writing, by 
conveying intelligence to a distance by means of 
signals, was, in later times, nearly superseded by 
the more general use of the word Semaphore, derived 
from the Greek o-wiaqc, sema (a sign), and Qepw, 
phero (to bear), a much more appropriate word, since 
intelligence was then communicated not by writing, 
but by signs. The practice of communicating news 
by signs is of the greatest antiquity and univer- 
sality. The Prophet Jeremiah, ch. vi. v. 1, alludes 
to it when he directs the children " to set up a sign 
of fire in Bethhaccerem ;" and the other prophets 
often speak of these signals, which were set up on 
the heights to give notice to distant people of the 
approach of an enemy. The same practice pre- 
vailed in England from the earliest times. Pen- 
nant, in his journey from Chester to London, de- 
scribing Hadley Church, on the edge of Enfield 
Chase, says, " On the top of the steeple there re- 



Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 139 

mains an iron pitch-pot, designed as a beacon, 
occasionally to be fired to alarm the country in case 
of invasion. It takes its name from the Saxon 
becman, to call by signs, from whence we get our 
word beckon." He adds, that before the time of 
Edward III. the signals were given by firing stacks 
of wood ; but in the 11th year of his reign (1338) 
it was first ordered that this species of alarm should 
be made with pitch-pots, placed on standards, or 
on elevated buildings within due distance of one 
another. In our days, however, when the use of 
signals to communicate intelligence has given way 
to writing, by means of electric wires, the old word 
telegraph (now appropriate to this method of com- 
munication) has revived, but it seems problematical 
whether it will long retain its place with the multi- 
tude, since men are beginning to substitute for it 
the word wire, and it is no uncommon language 
now for a man to say, "He has wired to Liver- 
pool," &c. 

The word sack, from the Greek ffaxxor, saccos, 
passed into the Latin language. Martial speaks of 
saccus nivarius (a snow-bag to cool wine with), and 
from the Latin this word has descended to us. 
Sarcasm is from the Greek frx^xa-fxo^ sarkasmos — 
from arxpKa.^co, sarJcazo (to tear off the flesh), and 
signifies, in a metaphorical sense, a bitter taunt, 
lacerating to the quick. From the same Greek 
word signifying flesh, aaefe, sarx, and (pay a, phage- 



140 EOOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 

(to eat), the Greeks formed their word oxpnofyayos, 
sarcophagos, literally meaning carnivorous, and it 
was applied by them as a substantive to denote a 
stone coffin, from the belief that the stone used in 
the construction of coffins had the property of con- 
suming the flesh. Pliny, in his 2nd book, ch. 96, 
says, " About Assos in Troas there grows a stone, 
wherewith all bodies are consumed, and thereupon 
sarcophagus it is called." In his 36th book, ch. 17, 
he writes further of this stone, " Near unto Assos, 
a citie in Troas, there is found in the quarries a 
certaine stone called Sarcophagus, which runneth in 
a direct veine, and is apt to be cloven, and so cut 
out of the rock by flakes ; the reason of that name 
is this, because that within the space of fortie days 
it is known for certain to consume the bodies of 
the dead which are bestowed therein, skin, flesh, 
and bone, all save the teeth." 

From the same Greek word (pocyco, phago (to eat), 
and xvQpeoiros, anthropus (a man), is formed the 
word Anthropophagi, used by Shakspeare in his 
Tragedy of Othello — 

" The cannibals that each other eat, 

The anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders." 

This word is also used by Bishop Taylor and other 
writers. This barbarous practice has existed in 
almost all ages of the world. Herodotus, speaking 
of the Issedonian Scythians, says, that as often as 



Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 141 

any one of them loses his father, his relations pro- 
vide some cattle, which they kill and cut in pieces ; 
they dismember, also, the body of the deceased, and 
mixing the whole together, feast upon it. The head 
alone is preserved ; from this they carefully remove 
the hair, and cleansing it thoroughly, set it in gold. 
Speaking of the Massagetse, he says, that as soon as 
any one of them becomes infirm through age, his 
relations put him to death, and then boil the body 
with the carcase of a sheep, and feast upon it. 
Speaking of the Padeei of India, he says, if any of 
them are diseased, his nearest connexions put him 
to death and eat him. They pay no regard to his 
assertions that he is not really ill, but without the 
smallest compunction deprive him of life. The 
Battas, inhabiting the island of Sumatra, are ad- 
dicted to the same practice ; and robbers amongst 
them, if taken in the fact, are publicly executed and 
eaten forthwith ; and proof the most conclusive has 

been brought against the New Zealanders, who de- 
ft O ' 

vour their captives taken in war. in the most open 
manner. Revolting as this practice is, it becomes 
most degrading when we consider the meaning of 
the Greek word av9§ wwor, anthiropus (man), of which 
the word anthropophagi is formed. The word is 
derived from the Greek words ava rpswciv uttx, ana 
trepein opa (looking upwards). Ovid seems to have 
been well aware of the origin of this word for, in 
the first book of his Metamorphoses, he distinctly 



142 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 

speaks of this characteristic of man, in the lines ren- 
dered into English — 

" Whilst other creatures towards the earth look down, 
He gave to man a front sublime, and raised 
His nobler view to ken the starry heaven." 

So Cicero, in his second book of the ' Nature of 
the Gods/ says : " God raised men aloft from the 
ground, and made them upright, that by viewing 
the heavens they might receive the knowledge of 
the Gods., For men are upon the earth not merely 
as inhabitants, but as spectators of things above 
them in the heavens, the view of which belongs to 
no other animals." And again, in his first book 
' De Legibus,' ch. 2, he says : " For while Nature 
has bent down other animals to their pasture, 
she has raised up the face and form of man 
alone, and thus excites him to the contemplation 
of the heavens, as of his native and original ha- 
bitation." 

The Greeks, while applying to man this generic 
name, signifying looking upwards, used a word 
having the reverse signification to describe an old 
man about to leave the world — their word yspcov, 
geron (an old man), being derived from the word yw, 
ge (the earth), and opuv, oron (looking on). 

" With downcast looks he views his place of birth, 
And bows his bended trunk to mother earth." 

So also the term for an old woman was yspaia., 
geraia, by contraction graia, from whence we derive 



Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 143 

our word gray. Our word humble has a similar 
meaning with the Greek word for an old man, being 
derived from the Latin word humus (the ground). 
An humble man therefore is one whose eyes are 
directed to the ground. 

The word idea is transferred into our language 
from the Greek i£&a, letter for letter, and comes 
from e^oj, eido (to see). Idea has in our language 
a different signification, however, from that which 
it had in the Greek, where it was used to denote 
aspect or general appearance. In St. Matthew 
xxviii. 3, the angel rolling back the stone from the 
sepulchre is described as having " a countenance 
like lightning," the word in the Greek for coun- 
tenance being idea. From originally meaning the 
aspect of the human countenance, the word was 
applied to denote those images which present them- 
selves to the mind, leading to thought, and thus 
came to signify mental imagination. 

Again, our word dower is from the Greek Lr, 
dos, from SiSwfAi, didomi (to give), and signifies the 
provision which a husband gives to his wife to be 
enjoyed after his decease ; and when she comes into 
the possession of this gift by the death of her hus- 
band, she is called, from the same Greek word, the 
dowager ; but she is also entitled to something more 
which the law gives her, and this is called her 
paraphernalia, from the Greek irapa, para (beyond), 
and (pspvYi, pherne (dower), and signifies jewels, 



144 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS Chap. VIII. 

trinkets, and ornaments of the person, to which a 
wife has a right over and above her dower. Endow, 
to provide for the maintenance or sustentation of an 
almshouse or church, is from the same Greek word 
above mentioned, signifying to give ; and so also is 
dose, a portion of medicine given to a patient. 
Anecdote, something not yet given out or published, 
is from the same word compounded with a, a (not), 
and ex, eh (out). 

Sir Henry Spelman suggests that the word pillory 
comes from the French pilleur (a pilferer), because 
the punishment by the pillory was inflicted on 
thieves ; and Skinner conceives that the true origin 
of the word is pillar, suggesting that this instrument 
of punishment was formerly surrounded by pillars. 
However ingenious these suggestions may be, I 
cannot think them satisfactory, but that we must 
look to the Greek for the true derivation of this 
word: <nu\copos, puloros, was with the Greeks a 
porter or doorkeeper ^as pilloro is now with the 
Spaniards), and no doubt this officer derived his 
name from his office, having the care of the door, 
or from the custom still prevalent in our jails of 
looking through a lattice, before opening the door, 
to see who sought admittance. The word, being a 
compound of two Greek words, itv\r\, pule (a door), 
and opxw, orao (to look), signified one who looked 
after or had the charge of a door, or one who 
looked through a door. The form of the pillory 



Chap. VIII. OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 145 

with us seems to have varied, but generally to have 
consisted of a door or wooden frame supported upon 
a platform, behind which the delinquent was fixed, 
with his head and arms thrust through three holes 
cut in the door or frame. This instrument of 
punishment was known to our Saxon ancestors by 
the name of the halsfang, from hals, the neck, 
and fang, to catch, and signified an instrument that 
caught by the neck : this word fang is the origin 
of our word finger. 

The pillory is mentioned in the statute of 51 
Hen. III., 1266, where it is rendered into Latin by 
the word colUstrigium, from collum, the neck, and 
stringere, to stretch ; and in a subsequent part of 
the statute by the word pillorium, framed from the 
French name for this instrument, pilon, which I 
have no doubt they framed from the Greek words 
above mentioned, signifying looking through a door. 
In Hawkins's 'Pleas of the Crown' we find that 
lords of hundreds and manors were bound to main- 
tain a pillory within the limits of their jurisdiction — 
a charge from which they are now relieved, since 
the punishment by pillory was abolished by Act of 
Parliament in the first year of the present Queen's 
reign. Before taking leave of this word, I will give 
one instance of the infliction of this punishment. 
In 1757 John Shebbeare published several letters, 
addressed to the people of England, attributing the 
progress of the national ruin to the influence of the 

H 



146 ROOTS AND RAMIFICATIONS. Chap. VIII. 

Crown of Hanover on the councils of England. 
For publishing these letters he was prosecuted and 
found guilty, and sentenced to stand in the pillory 
at Charing Cross, and to pay a fine of five pounds. 
We read in Burrows' s Reports that the under-sheriff 
befriended him in his punishment, and permitted 
him to stand on the pillory without putting his head 
and arms through the holes, and allowed him to 
have a servant in livery in attendance upon him 
holding an umbrella over his head. For these 
breaches of duty, and for ridiculing the majesty of 
the law, the under-sheriff was fined fifty pounds 
and imprisoned for two months. 

I might multiply instances of Greek words in 
general use with us, but the foregoing shall suffice, 
as it is time to close this chapter, and with it to 
bring this little work to a termination. 

In conclusion, I have only to beg that the reader 
will not omit to read the Preface. 



Vale. 



INDEX. 



ABBE\ 

A Page 

Abbe 121 

Abbey 121 

Abbot 121 

Abolish 121 

Abominable .. .. 28 

Abricot 77 

Abstemious .. .. 30 

Acerbity 85 

Acrid 85 

AgapEe 105 

Agate 42 

Alabaster 55 

Alescote 71 

Ambient 35 

Ambition 35 

Ambrosden .. .. 16 

Ammonite 127 

Anecdote 144 

Angeln 13 

Angles 13 

Anglesea 14 

Annals 28 

Anthropophagi .. .. 140 

Aperture 83 

Apothecary .. .. 137 
Apricot .. .. 77,89 

April 82 

Appease 85 

Artery 119 

Artillery 114 

Assess 24 

Athelney 14 

Attainted 119 

Attribute 23 

Auspicious 27 

Axholm 19 

B 

Bailiff 77 

Ballium 75 

Barbary 87 

Bardsey 14 



CAVALIER. 

Page 

Beadle 124 

Beads 123 

Beckon 139 

Bedehouse 122 

Bederepe 125 

Bedeme 122 

Bedesman 122 

Bedlam 48 

Bermondsey .. .. 14 

Bezant 50 

Bidden days .. .. 125 

Biscuit 88 

Bishop 77 

Blanket 44 

Boa 42 

Bourse 78 

Bradford 17 

Bristol 15 

Bridewell 48 

Burser 78 

Burly 66 

Butcher 67 

Butts 116 

C 

Calico 50 

Cage 86 

Calcedony 42 

Calendar 28 

Cambria 12 

Canal 92 

Canary 91 

Cancel 100 

Candle 92 

Canopy 133 

Carraway 46 

Carriage 92 

Cartel 37 

Cartoon 37 

Cataract 133 

Catarrh 133 

Cavalier 74 

H 2 



148 



INDEX. 



CAVALRY. 

Page 

Cavalry 74 

Cemetery 96 

Censor 27 

Censorious 27 

Censure 27 

Census 24 

Chalybeate 41 

Chamomile 72 

Chancel 100 

Chancellor 100 

Channel 92 

Chaos 92 

Chapel 113 

Chapman 15 

Chapmanslade .. .. 16 

Character 37 

Characteristic .. .. 37 

Charter 37 

Cheap 15 

Cheapside 16 

Chepstow 15 

Cherry 40 

Chesyl 16 

Chesyl bank .. .. 17 

Cheval 74 

Chevalier 74 

Chichester 10 

Chippenham .. .. 16 

Chipping 15 

Chipping Ongar . . . . 16 

Chiselhurst .. .. 16 

Chiselhampton .. .. 16 

Chivalry 74 

Chocolate 41 

Cholera 133 

Chopping 15 

Chrystal 95 

Church 98 

Cider .. 69 

Clover 59 

Climate 95 

Climax .. .. .. 95 

Coigne 86 

Columbarium . . .. 98 



DOWAGER. 

Page 

Concoct 89 

Confiscate 21 

Contribute 22 

Cook 89 

Cookery 88 

Copper 43 

Cordial 134 

Cordwainer .. .. 53 

Core 134 

Corner 86 

Corollary 21 

CotsAvold 15 

Cricklade 19 

Crime 102 

Crisis 101 

Criterion 101 

Critical 101 

Critic 101 

Cumberland .. .. 12 

Currants 45 

Currier 67 

Cyder 69 

Cymri 12 

D 

Decoct 89 

Deerhurst 16 

Degree 129 

Delirious 34 

Den 16 

Denham 16 

Der 16 

Derby 16 

Derwent 16 

Digress 128 

Diocese 33 

Disburse 80 

Discern 102 

Discriminate .. .. 101 

Distribute 23 

Discuss .. .... 29 

Ditto 88 

Dose 144 

Dowager .... .. 143 



INDEX. 



149 



DOWER. 

Page 

Dower 143 

Dropsy 59 

Droitwicli 18 

Dyspepsia 88 

E 

Eager 84 

Ecclesiastic .. .. 98 

Eelfare 126 

Egress 128 

Ecot 72 

Ecstasy 135 

Ella East 11 

Ella Kirk 11 

Ella West .. .. .. 11 

Elland 12 

Ellerbeck 12 

Ellerbura 12 

Ellerby 11 

Elm 87 

Elver 126 

Ely 14 

Emaciate 84 

Endow 144 

Energy 135 

Engrave 138 

Ermine 45 

Essex 9 

Evolve 36 

Ewhurst 132 

Ewridge 132 

Expences 31 

Ey 14 

F 

Fairs 110 

Fan 82 

Fane 82 

Fare 126 

Farewell 126 

Farnham 16 

Farrier 49 

Farthing 65 

Fascinate . . • . . . . 81 



HIGHGATE. 

Page 

Father .. .. .. 62 

Ferry 126 

Finger 145 

Fiscal 21 

Foliage 39 

Foolscap 39 

Ford 126 

Forfeit 120 

Fortnight 107 

Freemason 122 

Furmety 68 

Furnace 69 

G 

Gait 17 

Gaiters 17 

Galli 8 

Galvanism 45 

Gaol 86 

Garret 133 

Gate 17 

Gazette 113 

Genuflection .. .. 85 

Gibberish 45 

Gin 45 

Gradeley 129 

Gray 130, 143 

Greenwich 18 

Grees 128 

Greyhound 129 

Groat 66 

Grog 66 

Grogram 66 

Guitar 83 

H 

Ham 16 

Hamlet 16 

Hampden 16 

Hereford 17 

Herring 17 

Hertsey 14 

Hexagon 86 

Highgate 17 



150 



INDEX. 



HOLME 

Page 

Holme 19 

Hollands 45 

Horizon .. ,'. .. 133 

Horsham 16 

Humble 143 

Hurst 16 

Hurst Courtney .. 16 

Hurst Monceaux .. 16 

Hurst Pierpoint .. 16 

Hypocrite 102 

I 

Idea 143 

Interpreter 35 

Interval 75 

Intoxicate .. .. • • 131 

J 

Jalap 40 

K 

KenehmSt 12 

Kennel 91 

Kent 9 

Kerk masses .. .. 110 

Kerk-misse .. .. 110 

Keynsham 16 

Kindle 92 

Knee 85 

Knot 42 

Know 85 

Knutsford 17 

L 

Lade 19 

Ladle 19 

Lamp .. .. ,. .. 135 

Lansdowne 10 

Leather .... .. 62 

Lechlade 19 

Leisure 85 

Lettuce 61 

Libertine 22 

License .. ., .. 85 



OMEN. 

Page 

Lichen 133 

Licorice 59 

Linen 61 

Linseed 61 

Linsey Woolsey . . . . 61 

Linnet 61 

Liturgy 135 

Loadstone 52 

M 

Macerate .. ... .. 84 

Machine 87 

Madeira 40 

Magnet 52 

Mansion 74 

Maraschino 40 

Margate 17 

Meager 84 

Meander 52 

Menial 63 

Mercia 12 

Merino 70 

MiddleAvick .. .. 18 

Middlesex .-. .. .. 9 

Milliner 53 

Mimic 29 

Missenden 16 

Molasses 59 

Morocco 53 

Moustache 133 

Mummery 44 

N 

Nantwich 18 

Neighbour 67 

Norfolk 11 

Northumberland . . 11 

Northwich 18 

Norwich 11,18 

O 

Offenham 12 

Offley 11 

Omen 28 



INDEX. 



151 



0SWESTEY. 

Page 

Oswestry 12 

Overture 82 

Oxford 17 

P 

Pacha 77 

Palliate 23 

Pantomime .. .. 29 

Paradox 133 

Paralysis 133 

Paraphernalia .. .. 143 

Parchment 53 

Partridge 87 

Pauper 82 

Pavilion 134 

Pecker 87 

Peculate 31 

Peculiar 32 

Pecuniary 32 

Pedagogue 22 

Pedigree 129 

Pensive 31 

Pentagon 86 

Pepper 87 

Pheasant 41 

Physical 136 

Physician 136 

Pillory 144 

Pine 135 

Pirate.. .. .. .. 135 

Pistol 41 

Placable 85 

Placid 85 

Pleasure 85 

Ponder 31 

Porcelaine 33 

Porker 34 

Potatoe 77 

Precarious 125 

Precocious 89 

Prerogative .. .. 20 

Pretext 24 

Prevaricate 35 

Profane 82 

Progress 128 



SHEET. 

Page 

Province 36 

Pulpit 113 

Purlieu 112 

Purse 80 

Purser 80 

Q 

Quinine 60 

Quinsey 62 

Raven 80 

Kavenous 81 

Regress 128 

Reimburse 80 

Resign 22 

Retaliate 32 

Rhubarb 47 

Ridings 64 

Romescot 72 

Roodey 15 

S 

Sack 139 

Saffron 61 

Salmon 127 

Sandgate 17 

Sandwich 18 

Sarcasm 139 

Sarcophagus .. .. 140 

Schedule 37 

Scotales 71 

Scotfree 71 

Scruple 30 

Scum 85 

Seafaring 126 

Sebastopol 73 

Second 29 

Sedan 50 

Semaphore 138 

Se'nnight 107 

Sere 134 

Sewardstone .. .. 10 

Shallot 47 

Sheppev 14 

Sheet ." 37 



152 



INDEX. 



Sherry 

Shilling 

Shingle 

Shirley Wick 

Shoreham 

Shot .. 

Sincere 

Sleepgrave 

Solder.. 

Spaniel 

Spend .. 

Spume 

Squirrel 

Stigmatise 

Stipend 

Stow . . 

Stow-in-the 

Strange 

Stranger 

Sudbury 

Suffolk 

Surgeon 

Surrey 

Sussex 

Synagogue 



Wold 



Page 

40 
65 
17 
18 
16 
71 

134 
96 
72 
4-4 
31 
85 
68 
22 
31 
15 
15 
58 
58 
11 
11 

136 

9 

10 

63 



Tariff 51 

Telegraph 138 

Tench 87 

Thoroughfare .. .. 126 

Topaz 45 

Town 18 

Transgress 128 

Tribe 22 

Tribunal 22 

Tribune 22 

Tributary 23 

Tribute 22 

Troy 42 

Tucker 44 



WYCH-HOUSES. 

Page 

Tunnel 19 

Turkey 46 

Twelfth Night .. .. 107 

Tyning 18 

U 

Ufford 11 

Ulcer 87 

V 

Vallum .. .... 75 

Varicose 35 

Vernacular 22 

Vetch 81 

Vigil 108 

Vinegar 84 

Virgilius 73 

Vixen 82 

Voltaic 46 

Voluble .. .. .. 36 

Volume 36 

W 

Wakes 106 

Wales 8 

Wallingford .. .. 9 

Waltham 15 

War 8 

Warden 8 

Wardrobe 8 

Warren 8 

Wasp 8 

Waxscot 72 

Wayfaring 126 

Weald 15 

Welfare 126 

Wic 18 

Wicham 18 

Wither 62 

Wold 15 

Worsted 43 

Wych-houses .. .. 18 



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